Publicação
Bridging the interoperability gaps among trusted architectures in MCUs
| Resumo: | The increasing adoption of IoT devices highlights the urgent need for robust security solutions, particularly on low-end MCUs. However, these platforms typically lack the advanced security mechanisms found in higher-end processors, making them highly vulnerable to attacks. This paper presents an interoperable solution that enables Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) on low-end MCUs, leveraging platform-specific hardware security primitives available in both ARMv7-M and RISC-V architectures. By complementing these primitives with software-based isolation techniques, the proposed solution achieves strong domain isolation even in resource-constrained devices. Additionally, the adoption of the GlobalPlatform API provides a common abstraction layer that decouples application development from platform-specific details, allowing trusted applications to run seamlessly across different MCU platforms. In the evaluation, we assessed the solutions through performance microbenchmarks and real-world applications, demonstrating their feasibility and the trade-offs between security and performance across different workloads. |
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| Autores principais: | Pinto, Sandro |
| Outros Autores: | Cunha, Luís Carlos Costa; Oliveira, Daniel; Grisafi, Michele; Beozzo, Emanuele; Crispo, Bruno |
| Assunto: | Armv7-M Embedded systems Interoperability IoT Security RISC-V TEE Trusted Execution Environment |
| Ano: | 2025 |
| País: | Portugal |
| Tipo de documento: | comunicação em conferência |
| Tipo de acesso: | acesso aberto |
| Instituição associada: | Universidade do Minho |
| Idioma: | inglês |
| Origem: | RepositóriUM - Universidade do Minho |
| Resumo: | The increasing adoption of IoT devices highlights the urgent need for robust security solutions, particularly on low-end MCUs. However, these platforms typically lack the advanced security mechanisms found in higher-end processors, making them highly vulnerable to attacks. This paper presents an interoperable solution that enables Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) on low-end MCUs, leveraging platform-specific hardware security primitives available in both ARMv7-M and RISC-V architectures. By complementing these primitives with software-based isolation techniques, the proposed solution achieves strong domain isolation even in resource-constrained devices. Additionally, the adoption of the GlobalPlatform API provides a common abstraction layer that decouples application development from platform-specific details, allowing trusted applications to run seamlessly across different MCU platforms. In the evaluation, we assessed the solutions through performance microbenchmarks and real-world applications, demonstrating their feasibility and the trade-offs between security and performance across different workloads. |
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