Experts wonder if the key to protecting against software failures could be found in the hardware. This is what researchers at the University of Michigan are questioning, who have developed a processor that, they claim, would be almost impossible to hack .
The exploitation of many software flaws requires a deep understanding of the processor microarchitecture, in order to carry out the manipulation of various technical aspects, including code injection and side channel attacks.
Named Morpheus , to counter these attacks, scientists came up with the idea of creating a processor that randomly changes its microarchitecture , creating a kind of puzzle that would not really affect the operation of the software that runs on the computer.
A microarchitecture capable of changing several times per second
Although the researchers believe that an experienced hacker could solve this problem in a matter of hours, they also believe that this new processor would not give him a chance. And it is that it has a microarchitecture capable of modifying itself several times per second .
It is a system that has proven its worth, given that 525 cybersecurity experts spent three months trying to hack this processor without success, as part of a program sponsored by Darpa, the investigative agency of the United States Department of Defense.
As experts say, most vulnerabilities are related to software , since the vast majority are mainly caused by errors in the code .
However, as the various security updates experienced by all software demonstrate, it is almost impossible to write a program without the slightest error.
Since a processor is the piece of hardware in the computer that executes software programs, since it is the basis of all software systems, having a secure processor becomes an essential element when it comes to protecting any software that run into it .
A processor has an architecture, ARM for most smartphones and x86 for most laptop computers, that contains the set of instructions that software needs to run on the processor. In turn, the processors have a microarchitecture , which we could identify as the “guts” of it, since they allow the execution of that set of instructions, as well as the amount of energy it consumes and at what speed it is executed.
In this case, the Morpheus processor is responsible for adding an additional level of security , since it prevents hackers from using some of these loopholes to infiltrate the system, by changing its microarchitecture every few hundred milliseconds.
This means that for an attack to be effective, it is imperative that the microarchitecture is not only reverse-engineered, but also very quickly performed by the attacker. Thanks to this approach, the hacker would be faced with a computer that he had never seen before, so the chances of the attack being successful are greatly reduced.
