CAREER: Secure Timing Architecture for Untrusted Edge Systems

可靠的时间概念对于智能电网和工业控制系统等国家和工业基础设施的安全至关重要。随着虚拟现实、自动驾驶汽车、移动的健康和智能金融系统等网络边缘的人在回路系统的出现，时序原语的完整性对于用户安全和保障比以往任何时候都更加重要。尽管在隔离领域（如屏蔽硬件系统中的可信时钟源、安全时间同步协议和弹性高分辨率定时器）取得了进展，但实现在零信任边缘环境中广泛采用的安全时间架构受到两个关键挑战的阻碍。首先，受信任的处理器不提供对其计时源的安全和精确的访问。其次，没有通用的时间传输技术可以抵御网络中的延迟攻击，因此，现有的方法不适合在异构和大规模边缘部署中采用。拟议的工作是为具有不同时钟的边缘系统提供端到端的安全时间架构的第一次努力，用于时间戳和时间传输。该项目也是第一个研究安全时间协调的主动和被动传感机制的项目。拟议的工作还调查了在5G网络中保护时间敏感网络的挑战，其特点是支持大规模新兴的时间关键型应用。该项目将通过新的时钟源、时间传输通道和网络协议来推进安全定时的最新技术。所提出的跨栈方法重新构想了定时的核心概念-所有网络系统都使用的基本原理-并将为设计安全、可靠和高效的系统奠定基础。多样化和安全的时钟源将使研究人员和行业合作伙伴能够支持在实际边缘部署中具有严格时序要求的新兴应用。该项目还为教育和推广创造了机会：该项目将把时间安全研究纳入PI所在机构的新的和现有的研究生和高级本科课程，作为网络安全研究所的一部分。它将强调通过N2 Women专业编程，机构多样性努力和当地社区对女童子军部队的宣传，增加不同学生群体对计算的参与。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估来支持。

A reliable notion of time has always been critical for the security of national and industrial infrastructure, such as smart grids and industrial control systems. With the emergence of human-in-the-loop systems at the network edge, such as virtual reality, autonomous vehicles, mobile health, and smart financial systems, the integrity of timing primitives is more important than ever for user security and safety. Although there have been advances in isolated domains such as trusted clock sources in shielded hardware systems, secure time synchronization protocols, and resilient high-resolution timers, realizing secure time architectures for widespread adoption in zero-trust edge environments is hindered by two key challenges. First, trusted processors do not provide secure and precise access to their timekeeping source. Second, there is no universal time transfer technique that is resilient to delay attacks in the network, and hence, existing approaches are not suitable for adoption over heterogeneous and large-scale edge deployments. The proposed work is the first effort to provide an end-to-end, secure time architecture for edge systems with diverse clocks, for timestamping and time transfer. This project is also the first to study active and passive sensing mechanisms for secure time coordination. The proposed work also investigates challenges to secure time-sensitive networking in 5G networks, distinguished by support for emerging time-critical applications at large scales. This project will advance the state-of-the-art in secure timing with new clock sources, time transfer channels, and network protocols.The proposed cross-stack approach reimagines core concepts in timing -a fundamental primitive used by all networked systems- and will create a foundation for designing safe, secure, and efficient systems. The diverse and secure clock sources will enable researchers and industry partners to support emerging applications with strict timing requirements over real-world edge deployments. The project also creates opportunities for education and outreach: The project will incorporate research on time security into new and existing graduate and advanced undergraduate classes at the PIs' home institution as part of the Cybersecurity Institute. It will emphasize increasing participation among a diverse student population in computing via N2Women professional programming, institutional diversity efforts, and local community outreach to Girl Scout troops.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.