Enhancing Security of Embedded Linux on a Multi-core Processor

While recent embedded systems start to own more and more functionalities, security requirements become more and more important. In this paper we propose an approach to enhance the security of embedded systems. In this approach SPUMONE, a thin virtualization layer, is selected to build a multi-OS environment for its low overhead. Xv6 runs as trusted OS for executing the monitoring service that detects the violation of the integrity of the Linux kernel while Linux as a general purpose OS. The monitoring service checks whether Linux is compromised or not. A secure pager that offers the spatial isolation based on the core-local memory is proposed to protect the integrity of the xv6 kernel located in the main memory, which can make Linux and xv6 run in high security level.