Hashing hardware : identifying hardware during boot-time system verification

Abstract

Modern systems measure the software loaded at boot-time to ensure the machine starts in a trusted state. Such measurements, however, do not include any information about the underlying hardware of the machine. Recent DRAM-based attacks and the growing complexity of the supply chain attest to the importance of measuring hardware at boot. In this thesis, we propose a technique for designing measurement schemes for hardware components. We then apply this technique to designing and implementing a hardware measurement scheme for DRAM on a real system without hardware modifications. Finally, we evaluate our DRAM hardware measurement scheme and demonstrate that it achieves 89% accuracy in mapping a DRAM measurement to the manufacturing process from which that DRAM was produced.