Architecting Trigger-Action Platforms for Security, Performance and Functionality

Abstract

Trigger-action platform (TAP) is a type of distributed system that allows end-users to create programs that stitch their web-based services together to achieve useful automation. For example, a program can be triggered when a new spreadsheet row is added, it can compute on that data and invoke an action, such as sending a message on Slack. Current TAP architectures require users to place complete trust in their secure operation. Experience has shown that unconditional trust in cloud services is unwarranted -an attacker who compromises the TAP cloud service will gain access to sensitive data and devices for millions of users. In this work, we re-architect TAPs so that users have to place minimal trust in the cloud. Specifically, we design and implement TAPDance, a TAP that guarantees confidentiality and integrity of program execution in the presence of an untrustworthy TAP service. We utilize RISC-V Keystone enclaves to enable these security guarantees while minimizing the trusted software and hardware base. Performance results indicate that TAPDance outperforms a baseline TAP implementation using Node.js with 32% lower latency and 33% higher throughput on average.