Mobile devices are in roles where the integrity and confidentiality of their apps and data are of paramount importance. They usually contain a System-on-Chip (SoC), which integrates microprocessors and peripheral Intellectual Property (IP) connected by a Network-on-Chip (NoC). Malicious IP or software could compromise critical data. Some types of attacks can be blocked by controlling data transfers on the NoC using Memory Management Units (MMUs) and other access control mechanisms. However, commodity processors do not provide strong assurances regarding the correctness of such mechanisms, and it is challenging to verify that all access control mechanisms in the system are correctly configured. We propose a NoC Firewall (NoCF) that provides a single locus of control and is amenable to formal analysis. We demonstrate an initial analysis of its ability to resist malformed NoC commands, which we believe is the first effort to detect vulnerabilities that arise from NoC protocol violations perpetrated by erroneous or malicious IP.
While the issue of Trojan ICs has been receiving increasing amounts of attention, the overwhelming majority of anti-Trojan measures aim to address the problem during verification. While such methods are an important part of an overall anti-Trojan strategy, it is statistically inevitable that some Trojans will escape verification-stage detection, in particular in light of the increasing size and complexity of system-on-chip (SoC) solutions and the increasing use of third-party designs. In contrast with much of the previous work in this area, we specifically focus on run-time methods to identify the attacks of a Trojan and to adapt the system and respond accordingly. We describe a solution including a bus architecture in which the arbitration, address decoding, multiplexing, wrapping, and other components protect against malicious use of the bus.