Implementation of Code Integrity Check Module for RISC-V Architecture with AES

Abstract

Embedded applications are commonly used in different fields. Different kinds vulnerabilities can occur in embedded systems because of various reasons such as coding bugs or security attacks. Most of security vulnerabilities can occur during coding phase of an embedded application. During the design phase of a program, different types of coding bugs can be inserted to executable. On the other hand, even if the executable program is very well coded, many different kinds of vulnerabilities can also occur at runtime. In this thesis, we aim to provide a security application which controls integrity of running program in computer. Executable binary of a program consists of data and text sections. CPU fetches and executes instructions in the text section of a program. Each instruction block is firstly placed into instruction cache of CPU. Instruction block hashes are generated after compiler phase of a program. Then, during the runtime phase instruction block hashes are recalculated and compared with compiler phase hash. We aim to prevent running of a corrupted or manipulated program during runtime phase.