Sphinx: A Secure Architecture Based on Binary Code Diversification and Execution Obfuscation

Sphinx, a hardware-software co-design architecture for binary code and runtime obfuscation. The Sphinx architecture uses binary code diversification and self-reconfigurable processing elements to maintain application functionality while obfuscating the binary code and architecture states to attackers. This approach dramatically reduces an attacker's ability to exploit information gained from one deployment to attack another deployment. Our results show that the Sphinx is able to decouple the program's execution time, power and memory and I/O activities from its functionality. It is also practical in the sense that the system (both software and hardware) overheads are minimal.Comment: Boston Area Architecture 2018 Workshop (BARC18

Sphinx: a secure architecture based on binary code diversification and execution obfuscation

Sphinx, a hardware-software co-design architecture for binary code and runtime obfuscation. The Sphinx architecture uses binary code diversification and self-reconfigurable processing elements to maintain application functionality while obfuscating the binary code and architecture states to attackers. This approach dramatically reduces an attacker’s ability to exploit information gained from one deployment to attack another deployment. Our results show that the Sphinx is able to decouple the program’s execution time, power and memory and I/O activities from its functionality. It is also practical in the sense that the system (both software and hardware) overheads are minimal.Published versio

Evaluation of ECMWF water vapour fields by airborne differential absorption lidar measurements: a case study between Brazil and Europe

International audienceThree extended airborne Differential Absorption Lidar (DIAL) sections of tropospheric water vapour across the tropical and sub-tropical Atlantic in March 2004 are compared to short-term forecasts of the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF). The humidity fields between 28° S and 36° N exhibit large inter air-mass gradients and reflect typical transport patterns of low- and mid-latitudes like convection (e.g. Hadley circulation), subsidence and baroclinic development with stratospheric intrusion. These processes re-distribute water vapour vertically such that locations with extraordinary dry/moist air-masses are observed in the lower/upper troposphere, respectively. The mixing ratios range over 3 orders of magnitude. Back-trajectories are used to trace and characterize the observed air-masses. Overall, the observed water vapour distributions are largely reproduced by the short-term forecasts at 0.25° resolution (T799/L91), the correlation ranges from 0.69 to 0.92. Locally, large differences occur due to comparably small spatial shifts in presence of strong gradients. Systematic deviations are found associated with specific atmospheric domains. The planetary boundary layer in the forecast is too moist and to shallow. Convective transport of humidity to the middle and upper troposphere tends to be overestimated. Potential impacts arising from data assimilation and model physics are considered. The matching of air-mass boundaries (transport) is discussed with repect to scales and the representativity of the 2-D sections for the 3-D humidity field. The normalized bias of the model with respect to the observations is 6%, 11% and 0% (moist model biases) for the three along-flight sections, whereby however the lowest levels are excluded

Enhanced relativistic-electron beam collimation using two consecutive laser pulses

The double laser pulse approach to relativistic electron beam (REB) collimation has been investigated at the LULI-ELFIE facility. In this scheme, the magnetic field generated by the first laser-driven REB is used to guide a second delayed REB. We show how electron beam collimation can be controlled by properly adjusting laser parameters. By changing the ratio of focus size and the delay time between the two pulses we found a maximum of electron beam collimation clearly dependent on the focal spot size ratio of the two laser pulses and related to the magnetic field dynamics. Cu-K alpha and CTR imaging diagnostics were implemented to evaluate the collimation effects on the respectively low energy ( MeV) components of the REB

BRISC-V: An Open-Source Architecture Design Space Exploration Toolbox

In this work, we introduce a platform for register-transfer level (RTL) architecture design space exploration. The platform is an open-source, parameterized, synthesizable set of RTL modules for designing RISC-V based single and multi-core architecture systems. The platform is designed with a high degree of modularity. It provides highly-parameterized, composable RTL modules for fast and accurate exploration of different RISC-V based core complexities, multi-level caching and memory organizations, system topologies, router architectures, and routing schemes. The platform can be used for both RTL simulation and FPGA based emulation. The hardware modules are implemented in synthesizable Verilog using no vendor-specific blocks. The platform includes a RISC-V compiler toolchain to assist in developing software for the cores, a web-based system configuration graphical user interface (GUI) and a web-based RISC-V assembly simulator. The platform supports a myriad of RISC-V architectures, ranging from a simple single cycle processor to a multi-core SoC with a complex memory hierarchy and a network-on-chip. The modules are designed to support incremental additions and modifications. The interfaces between components are particularly designed to allow parts of the processor such as whole cache modules, cores or individual pipeline stages, to be modified or replaced without impacting the rest of the system. The platform allows researchers to quickly instantiate complete working RISC-V multi-core systems with synthesizable RTL and make targeted modifications to fit their needs. The complete platform (including Verilog source code) can be downloaded at https://ascslab.org/research/briscv/explorer/explorer.html.Comment: In Proceedings of the 2019 ACM/SIGDA International Symposium on Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA '19