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Using power fingerprinting (PFP) to monitor the integrity and enhance security of computer based systems

  • US 9,262,632 B2
  • Filed: 11/03/2011
  • Issued: 02/16/2016
  • Est. Priority Date: 11/03/2010
  • Status: Active Grant
First Claim
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1. A method for performing real-time integrity assessment of execution of a routine in a computer processing platform, comprising:

  • monitoring execution of the routine by tracing power consumption of a processor by sampling with one or more sensors during execution of the routine;

    using a platform characterization technique that further comprisesdetecting sections of traces sampled by the one or more sensors that display the largest dependence on state transitions in the processor;

    using said sections to select features carrying the most information;

    obtaining from a characterization of selected features of the routine contained in said sections a set of trusted power fingerprints of the routine;

    establishing a threshold for a specific false alarm rate based on the probability distribution of distance from a signature comprised of said trusted fingerprints;

    comparing a library of said trusted fingerprints to features extracted from traces from the execution of untrusted code;

    determining a distance between said fingerprints and the extracted features; and

    reporting an exception if the distance exceeds the threshold.

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