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#News(Security) [ via IoTForIndiaGroup ]
7 Habits of Highly Effective Microprocessors
The Project Sopris microcontroller prototype is designed to incorporate what Microsoft terms the “Seven Properties of Highly Secure Devices,” a common-sense melange of best practices. It includes the usual suspects, like enabling regular software updates, and requiring devices to store cryptographic keys in a secure part of the hardware. Hunt says they built the chip with “recognition that you build in security and then you also have to have mechanisms so that if in the future hackers get more clever, you are able to—without the consumer doing anything—be able to update and improve the security on the device.”
Battle Tested
So far, Microsoft’s solution has held up under scrutiny; in a challenge organized through bug bounty facilitator HackerOne, 150 security researchers failed to crack Project Sopris.
The Sopris chip also incorporates the concept of software compartmentalization. Or put another way, apps! Microcontrollers do such relatively basic computing that they aren’t typically architected to separate different processes; everything just runs together as one big, open program. That creates security issues, though, because it means that a problem in one process impacts all software. By keeping that software separated, a bug or glitch in one portion doesn’t need to taint the whole system, and can be corrected in isolation. It’s like how one app crashing on your smartphone doesn’t bring the whole system down.
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