Peraton Labs, Vanderbilt, and Galois to ensure trusted computing software for safety-critical applications
Summary
Officials of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in Arlington, Va., announced a $2.8 million contract to Peraton Labs on 6 Nov. 2024 for the Continuous-correctness On Opaque Processors (COOP) program to develop new trusted computing approaches. Reliability physics is grounded in mathematics and can serve as the rigorous, stable, and tautological basis for formal analysis. The COOP program uses these definitions: -- availability, or the ability to guarantee that data, information, and processing can be accessed by authorized entities when needed; -- confidentiality, or the ability to guarantee that data, information, processing, etc., are not disclosed to unauthorized entities; --continuous-correctness, or the ability to identify and correct errors over time within program metrics; -- control boundary, or the physical and logical boundaries between what the COOP solution can control, and what the solution has shared or no control; -- correct, or computation is correct if the computation output as expected in time and value; -- digital-side-channel, or manifestations of software running on hardware that is not physical; -- error, or a condition that makes the computational output incorrect; -- formal methods, or tools and techniques that provide rigorous mathematical proofs of specified properties; -- informal methods, or tools and techniques that are logical and rigorous but that do not require mathematical proof; -- integrity, or the ability to guarantee that data, information, and processing are not altered by unauthorized entities; -- mission-critical software, or any software that requires continuous-correctness guarantees; -- multi-modal-side-channel, or a combination of one or more distinct side-channels plus zero or more digital-side-channels; -- oracle, or an abstraction in formal methods to represent the axiomatic source of correct answers; -- opaque, or hardware or software with information about its behavior documented and known; -- processor, or digital hardware that runs software; proof, or an independently verifiable argument using mathematics; -- reference monitor, or a trusted entity that enforces control boundaries by completely mediating accesses; and -- side-channel, or physical manifestations of software running on hardware. Related: Trusted computing: its not just cybersecurity anymore Peraton, Vanderbilt, and Galois engineers will develop a threat model that is expected to change, as control boundaries depend on the proposed solutions. Potential embodiments of a COOP solution include integration within a processor’s package, co-located on a board, and independently located on a daughter card.