Cyber Escort Unit IP: Bridging Software and Hardware Security Gaps

The Cyber Escort Unit is designed to fill the security gap between software cyber security and hardware by escorting  step by step the program execution to achieve high execution performances in a secure way, allowing  advantageously real-time detection of zero-day attacks. Unique on the market, this product builds the foundation for hardware-enabled cybersecurity.

It is the only tool on the market that comprises technologies for detecting and deterring cyberattacks. This  technology acts on-the-fly. Precisely, Secure-Call is aiming to protect against the four threats which represent a large number of vulnerabilities encountered in practice.

• Return oriented programming (ROP): The attacker reuses chunks of code to assemble a malicious program like a patchwork.
• Stack Smashing, by exploiting a buffer over run or integer under-or-overflow etc.: the attacker crafts some  fake stack frames in order to change the program context.

Properties 

• Detect all return address corruption on the stack 
• No impact on computation time
• Very easyset-up 
• No recompilation needed, no influence on the protected program 
• Can be used in a safety context, i.e., restore PC, so that the system comes back to a stable state

• Real-time detection of Zero-Day attack by monitoring step by step the program execution  
• Stops the attack before it is executed 
• Compared to SW level cyber protection, it cannot be exploited remotely, as it is inaccessible to an attacker 
• Ensures protection against Fault Injection Attack (Temperature, Electromagnetic Injection,Clock Glitch, Power Glitch, Laser Injection) and Software Cyber Attack (Code Injection, Buffer Overflow, Stack Smashing, Control Flow Graph hijacking, 0-day attacks targeting SW execution)  
• Allows to limit false positive alarms as it is checking fundamental properties of well-behaved code 
• No processor modification 
• Runtime impact highly limited (<1% in most cases) 
•  Low hardware footprint 
•  Agnostic for the program

• Secure Boot
• Zero-day attacks
• Cyber andphysical attacks targeting the code execution

• Obfuscated VHDL RTL of the IP 
• Self-checking RTL Testbench based on reference scenario for simulation
•  User manual, integration guideline and test plan