Performance of Secure Boot in Embedded Systems

Abstract

With the proliferation of the Internet of Things (IoT), the need to prioritize the overall system security is more imperative than ever. The IoT will profoundly change the established usage patterns of embedded systems, where devices traditionally operate in relative isolation. Internet connectivity brought by the IoT exposes such previously isolated internal device structures to cyber-attacks through the Internet, which opens new attack vectors and vulnerabilities. For example, a malicious user can modify the firmware or operating system by using a remote connection, aiming to deactivate standard defenses against malware. The criticality of applications, for example, in the Industrial IoT (IIoT) further underlines the need to ensure the integrity of the embedded software. One common approach to ensure system integrity is to verify the operating system and application software during the boot process. However, safety-critical IoT devices have constrained boot-up times, and home IoT devices should become available quickly after being turned on. Therefore, the boot-time can affect the usability of a device. This paper analyses performance trade-offs of secure boot for medium-scale embedded systems, such as Beaglebone and Raspberry Pi. We evaluate two secure boot techniques, one is only software-based, and the second is supported by a hardware-based cryptographic storage unit. For the software-based method, we show that secure boot merely increases the overall boot time by 4%. Moreover, the additional cryptographic hardware storage increases the boot-up time by 36%.

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“…Modern chips provide several security features to prevent side‐channel attacks by implementing different cryptographic techniques. Booting attacks : Security procedures are not enabled at the boot stage so IoT edge devices can be vulnerable to several attacks. The attacker can capture the node during the reboot process by taking the advantage of these vulnerabilities 55 . To prevent this attack boot process must be secure in these devices. Sleep deprivation : In such types of attacks, the intruder tries to drain the power sources of edge devices.…”

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“…Implementing secure boot, whether in hardware or software, can introduce performance overheads. This translates to increased area requirements in hardware, while in software, it can lead to increased power consumption [32].…”

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“…For example, Profentzas et. al [9] evaluate the overhead of software-based and hardware-based secure boot on embedded platforms, namely, raspberry pi and beaglebone. Their study shows that the secured system presents an increased boot time ranging from 4% to 36%, depending on the technique and algorithms employed.…”