Embedded system protection from software corruption

As Embedded Systems are being network enabled, allowing for remote updates and data sharing, software corruption has become a major concern. Security protection has mostly been overlooked. Software corruption can simplistically be considered as unauthorized instructions that are executed within the system. This can occur through behaviorally modified instruction code introduced via new software installation, updates, or application input data (such as buffer overflows). We introduce a vault architecture that prevents the insertion of software corruptions for embedded systems that allow remote access. Simulation results for the vault architecture are provided.