Team for Research in
Ubiquitous Secure Technology

Citation
Jonathan M. McCune, Bryan Parno, Adrian Perrig, Michael Reiter, Arvind Seshadri. "How Low Can You Go? Recommendations for Hardware-Supported Minimal TCB Code Execution". ACM Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems (ASPLOS), ACM, March, 2008.

Abstract
We explore the extent to which newly available CPU-based security technology can reduce the Trusted Computing Base (TCB) for security-sensitive applications. We find that although this new technology represents a step in the right direction, significant performance issues remain. We offer several suggestions that leverage existing processor technology, retain security, and improve performance. Implementing these recommendations will finally allow application developers to focus exclusively on the security of their own code, enabling it to execute in isolation from the numerous vulnerabilities in the underlying layers of legacy code.

Electronic downloads

• http://sparrow.ece.cmu.edu/group/pub/mccune_parno_perrig_reiter_seshadri_asplos08.pdf

• HTML

  Jonathan M. McCune, Bryan Parno, Adrian Perrig, Michael
  Reiter, Arvind Seshadri. <a
  href="http://www.truststc.org/pubs/386.html"
  >How Low Can You Go? Recommendations for
  Hardware-Supported Minimal TCB Code Execution</a>, ACM
  Conference on Architectural Support for Programming
  Languages and Operating Systems (ASPLOS), ACM, March, 2008.

• Plain text

  Jonathan M. McCune, Bryan Parno, Adrian Perrig, Michael
  Reiter, Arvind Seshadri. "How Low Can You Go?
  Recommendations for Hardware-Supported Minimal TCB Code
  Execution". ACM Conference on Architectural Support for
  Programming Languages and Operating Systems (ASPLOS), ACM,
  March, 2008.

• BibTeX

  @inproceedings{McCuneParnoPerrigReiterSeshadri08_HowLowCanYouGoRecommendationsForHardwareSupportedMinimal,
      author = {Jonathan M. McCune and Bryan Parno and Adrian
                Perrig and Michael Reiter and Arvind Seshadri},
      title = {How Low Can You Go? Recommendations for
                Hardware-Supported Minimal TCB Code Execution},
      booktitle = {ACM Conference on Architectural Support for
                Programming Languages and Operating Systems
                (ASPLOS)},
      organization = {ACM},
      month = {March},
      year = {2008},
      abstract = {We explore the extent to which newly available
                CPU-based security technology can reduce the
                Trusted Computing Base (TCB) for
                security-sensitive applications. We find that
                although this new technology represents a step in
                the right direction, significant performance
                issues remain. We offer several suggestions that
                leverage existing processor technology, retain
                security, and improve performance. Implementing
                these recommendations will finally allow
                application developers to focus exclusively on the
                security of their own code, enabling it to execute
                in isolation from the numerous vulnerabilities in
                the underlying layers of legacy code.},
      URL = {http://www.truststc.org/pubs/386.html}
  }
  

Posted by Adrian Perrig on 2 May 2008.
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