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Hardware-assisted Memory Tracing on New SoCs Embedding FPGA Fabrics

Published: 07 December 2015 Publication History

Abstract

The FPGA world recently experienced significant changes with the introduction of new Systems-on-Chip (SoCs) embedding high-end microprocessors and programmable logic on the same integrated circuit. The architecture of these SoCs can be exploited to offer an unprecedented level of monitoring of the memory accesses of running software components, a key element of performance, safety and security analysis. This paper presents the hardware / software implementation of such a memory tracing tool on one of these SoCs. It also proposes example applications in the security field and two attacks --- a pass-phrase retrieval and an access control bypass --- to demonstrate the power of hardware-assisted memory tracing.

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cover image ACM Other conferences
ACSAC '15: Proceedings of the 31st Annual Computer Security Applications Conference
December 2015
489 pages
ISBN:9781450336826
DOI:10.1145/2818000
Publication rights licensed to ACM. ACM acknowledges that this contribution was authored or co-authored by an employee, contractor or affiliate of a national government. As such, the Government retains a nonexclusive, royalty-free right to publish or reproduce this article, or to allow others to do so, for Government purposes only.

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  • ACSA: Applied Computing Security Assoc

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 07 December 2015

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Author Tags

  1. Memory tracing
  2. Systems-on-Chip
  3. memory protection

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ACSAC 2015

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Overall Acceptance Rate 104 of 497 submissions, 21%

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