User-controlled hardware security anchors: evaluation and designs

许多现代处理器都配备了支持某种可信执行环境（TEE）的硬件扩展。这允许程序安全地运行-保护处理器上运行的其他程序或操作系统软件。通过在用户和硬件锚之间建立安全接口，我们可以使用户平台和设备更能抵御恶意软件和其他类型的网络攻击。该项目的主要目标之一是促进和促进TEE作为我们安全架构的主要信任锚的采用。因此，TEE本身的安全性至关重要。我们将对不同TEE实现的安全功能进行全面评估，以确定它们是否适合作为信任锚。这包括评估加密协议，侧通道漏洞和实现弱点。硬件支持的TEE旨在确保代码可以安全地执行。然而，用户接口设备（例如，键盘、显示器或触摸屏）通常不直接连接到安全硬件，这意味着用户不能与TEE安全地交互。我们将通过分析用例和使用辅助设备和专用功能开发安全接口来解决用户直接与TEE交互的局限性。如今的身份验证主要基于用户提供的信息，如密码或生物识别。这些方法通常使用容易窃取或暴力破解的信息。业界一直在转向多因素身份验证作为分散风险的一种手段，但这些方法在仍然依赖弱因素的同时带来了可用性挑战。我们将研究利用强大的基于硬件的安全机制来提高身份验证的强度和可用性的机会。我们亦会建立一个架构，以设计协议和用户体验，利用这些硬件安全原语，以提高现有方法的安全性，可扩展性和用户认证的可用性。我们的研究成果的分析和应用将在合适的平台上进行演示和实施，包括安全硬件，智能设备和认证令牌的集成。

Many modern processors are equipped with hardware extensions that enable some kind of Trusted Execution Environment (TEE). This allows programs to run securely - protected from other programs or operating system software running on the processor. By establishing a secure interface between the user and the hardware-anchor, we can make user platforms and devices more resilient to malware and other types of cyber attacks.One of the main goals of this project is to promote and facilitate the adoption of TEE as the main trust anchor for our security architectures. As such, the security of the TEEs themselves is of paramount importance. We will perform a thorough evaluation of the security features of different TEE implementations to determine their suitability as trust anchors. This includes assessing cryptographic protocols, side-channel vulnerabilities, and implementation weaknesses.Hardware supported TEEs aim to ensure that code can execute securely. However, user interface devices (for example, a keyboard, display or touch screen) are usually not connected directly to the secure hardware, which means that the user cannot interact securely with the TEE. We will address the limitations of users interacting directly with TEEs through analysing use cases and developing secure interfaces using auxiliary devices and dedicated features.Authentication today is largely based on user supplied information like passwords or biometrics. These approaches often use information that is easy to steal or brute force. The industry has been moving towards multi-factor authentication as a means of spreading risk, but these approaches impose usability challenges while still relying on weak factors. We will investigate opportunities to leverage strong hardware-based security mechanisms to improve both the strength and usability of authentication. We will also build an architecture for designing protocols and user experiences that leverage these hardware security primitives to enhance the security, manageability, and usability of user authentication over existing approaches.The analysis and applications of our research findings will be demonstrated and implemented on suitable platforms including secure hardware, smart devices and integration with authentication tokens.