CISR - Projects - SecureCore

Research: Projects: SecureCore

SecureCore
Trustworthy Commodity Computing and Communications

The SecureCore project will investigate the fundamental architectural features required for trustworthy operation of mobile computing devices such as smart cards, embedded controllers and hand-held computers. The goal is to provide secure processing and communication features for resource-constrained platforms, without compromise of performance, size, cost or energy consumption. In this environment, the security must also be built-in, transparent and flexible.

A clean-slate design approach, free of previous assumptions and constraints, will be used to integrate support for these features in the *core components* of the mobile platform: the processor hardware, the operating system kernel and the networking interface. The research plan is to: (1) develop a new systematic analysis of mobile computing threats and security requirements, (2) investigate the synergistic design of new core components, resulting in an integrated SecureCore architecture, and (3) develop experiments and prototypes to demonstrate the effectiveness of the SecureCore.

The significance of this research lies in the exploration of new approaches for threat and requirements analysis, a fresh look at integrated support for security, performance, functionality and usability in mobile platforms, and the potential for innovative advancements in processor instruction set architecture, operating system kernel design, and secure network protocols.

The broader impact of the SecureCore project will be in education and the transfer of foundational knowledge to the public sector. The conceptual and empirical results of the research will be translated into one or more university-level teaching modules. The diversity of our teaching and work environments ensures that the pedagogy developed will have wide applicability and influence. In addition, the SecureCore architecture and integrated security model will be openly available. As a result, new generations of researchers, product developers and educators will be able to more constructively contribute to the advancement of security in Cyberspace.

Organization
SecureCore is a collaboration research project that involves a team from the NPS, Princeton University, and Information Sciences Institute of the University of California

Sponsors
National Science Foundation under grant number CNS-0430566
DARPA

NPS Research Team
Cynthia Irvine - Co PI
Paul Clark
Tim Levin
Thuy Nguyen

Students
Francis Afinidad
Richard "Buddy" Vernon

Collaborators
Ruby Lee, Princeton University - PI
Mung Chiang, Princeton University - Co PI
Terry Benzel, USC Information Sciences Institute, Co PI

Collaborating Students
Ganesha Bhaskara, USC Information Sciences Institute

Publications

Levin, T. E., Irvine, C. E., Weissman, C., Nguyen, T. D., "Analysis of Three Multilevel Security Architectures" to appear in proceedings of the Computer Security Architecture Workshop, ACM. November 2, 2007, Fairfax, Virginia, USA. (PDF)

Bhaskara, B., Levin, T. E., Nguyen, T. D., Benzel, T. V., Irvine, C. E., Clark, P. C., "Integration of User Specific Hardware for SecureCore Cryptographic Services", NPS Technical Report NPS-CS-06-12, July 2006. (PDF)

Levin, T. E., Irvine, C. E., and Nguyen, T. D., "An Analysis of Three Kernel-based Multilevel Security Architectures", NPS Technical Report NPS-CS-06-001, August 2006. (PDF)

Benzel, T. V., Irvine, C. E., Levin, T. E., Bhaskara, G., Nguyen, T. D., and Clark, P. C., "Design Principles for Security", NPS-CS-05-010, Naval Postgraduate School, September 2005. (PDF) (Also Available as ISI-TR-605.)

Afinidad, F., Irvine, C.E., Nguyen, T. D., and Levin, T. E., "A Time Interval Memory Protection System", NPS-CS-06-002, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California, November 2005. (PDF)

Afinidad, F., Levin, T., Irvine, C. E., and Nguyen, T. D., "A Model for Temporal Interval Authorizations", Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Software Technology Track, Information Security Education and Foundational Research, Kauai, Hawaii, January 2006, p. 218. (PDF)

Afinidad, F., Levin, T., Irvine, C. E., and Nguyen, T. D., "Foundation for a Time Interval Access Control Model", Mathematical Methods, Models, and Architectures for Computer Networks Security, MMM-ACNS 2005, St. Petersburg, Russia, September 24-28, 2005, Proceedings, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, ed. Vladimir Gorodetsky, Igor Kotenko, and Victor Skormin, Springer-Verlag GmbH, Vol. 2685, pp 406-411, St. Petersburg, Russia, September 24-28, 2005.05paper_foundation.pdf (PDF)

Downloads

Poster - SecureCore West 2008 as (PDF) or (PPT) or (Full-sized 24x36 poster)

SecureCore NPS Poster 2007 as (PDF) or (PPT)

Nugget - SecureCore 2007 (doc)

Poster - NSF Cyber Trust Annual Principal Investigator Meeting, January 28-30, 2007, Atlanta, Georgia (PDF) or (PPT)

Nugget - SecureCore 2005 (doc)

Poster - (SecureCore West) National Science Foundation Poster - CyberTrust meeting, Sept 26, 2005 (PDF)

Poster - (SecureCore East) National Science Foundation Poster - CyberTrust meeting, Sept 26, 2005 (PDF)

Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

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