Cisco is working to analyze embedded devices with Prof. Tim Sherwood's Architecture Lab

Professor Tim Sherwood's Computer Architecture and Embedded Systems Lab is the recipient of a generous gift from Cisco Systems, Inc. to support research entitled, "Formally Analyzing Software Security on Naked Embedded Hardware." The proposed work explores the extent to which an analysis of security properties can be made to “cut-through” the many different layers of abstraction in a typical system; from application, through an embedded operating system, all the way down to the logic implementation. While there is no silver bullet to solve the problem of security, the ability to analyze how a set of software behaves on various (and often buggy) hardware platforms is a powerful tool enabling more portable secure software.

The core of this research is to formalize the ways in which system-level security properties interact with the design from the very start at the lowest levels of digital abstraction — logic gates. Building on their award- winning prior work examining "Networks-On-Chip with Provable Security Properties" and "Tracking Information Flow at the Gate-Level for Secure Architectures," Prof. Sherwood and his team are examining the ways in which their new foundation for embedded system formal analysis enables the careful and precise analysis of stripped down operating systems and applications.