Trusted Execution of Periodic Tasks for Embedded Systems*

Abstract

Systems that interact with the environment around them generally run some periodic tasks. This class of systems include, among others, embedded control systems. Embedded controllers have been proven vulnerable to various security attacks, including attacks that alter sensor and actuator data and attacks that disrupt the calculation of the control signals. In this paper, we propose, and implement, a mechanism to execute a periodic task and its communication interfaces in a trusted execution environment. This allows us to execute an isolated controller, thus offering higher security guarantees. We analyse the overhead of switching between the regular (possibly compromised) execution environment and the trusted execution environment and quantify the effect of this defence mechanism on the control performance.