Introspective Computing: A Multicore Approach to Availability, Reliability and Security

1
Introspective Computing A Multicore Approach to
Availability, Reliability and Security
Hsien-Hsin Sean Lee School of ECE, Georgia
Tech http//arch.ece.gatech.edu

• Research Objective
• This research investigates architectural
  techniques to exploit the emerging multicore
  processing platform to enable introspective
  computing an automonic system addressing
  issues of availability, reliability, and
  security.

Multicore
Attack!
The growing concerns caused by cyber exploits and
remote attacks on network call for a system
architecture providing effective countermeasures
and efficient recovery. By leveraging the
computing capability of a multicore processor,
this research explores the design space of
programming models, shepherding software, and
architectural support for fulfilling such needs.
Service
Monitor
Core 0
Core 1
Cache
Dual-Core
Attack!
OS
RTS Security State
The target applications are primarily network
services, e.g. online merchants, application
providers, etc.
Introspective Multicore System
Approach and Impact

• New Approaches
• Inter-core insulation
• Introspection capability
• Delta checkpoint and recovery

• Research Impact
• High availability computing systems
• High security architecture
• New multicore programming model

• To enable introspective computing, a system must
  exhibit the following property
• Insulation and Isolation the assurance to
  provide a sandbox for guarding components.
• Introspection the ability to detect attempted
  exploits and identify system corruption.
• Prevention the ability o prevent attempted
  intrusions.
• Recovery the ability to recover from a
  corrupted state and restore execution.
• Performance to enable the above functionality
  with minimal performance overhead.
• A multicore processor presents an ideal
  opportunity to achieve the objectives of an
  introspective computing system. Each individual
  core on such a system can be programmed and
  configured asymmetrically in terms of their
  responsibility and functionality. The guarding
  core is designated to perform online monitoring
  and execution inspection within a protected
  sandbox while the cores running service
  applications are exposed to the external network
  with bounded security privilege. Due the close
  coupling of the cores, checkpointing and fault
  recovery can be implemented in a highly efficient
  manner to enable introspection with minimal cost.