A secure processor architecture for encrypted computation on untrusted programs

Christopher Fletcher, Marten Van Dijk, Srinivas Devadas

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

This paper considers encrypted computation where the user specifies encrypted inputs to an untrusted program, and the server computes on those encrypted inputs. To this end we propose a secure processor architecture, called Ascend, that guarantees privacy of data when arbitrary programs use the data running in a cloud-like environment (e.g., an untrusted server running an untrusted software stack). The key idea to guarantee privacy is obfuscated instruction execution; Ascend does not disclose what instruction is being run at any given time, be it an arithmetic instruction or a memory instruction. Periodic accesses to external instruction and data memory are performed through an Oblivious RAM (ORAM) interface to prevent leakage through memory access patterns. We evaluate the processor architecture on SPEC benchmarks running on encrypted data and quantify overheads.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationSTC'12 - Proceedings of the Workshop on Scalable Trusted Computing
Pages3-8
Number of pages6
DOIs
StatePublished - 2012
Externally publishedYes
Event7th ACM Workshop on Scalable Trusted Computing, STC 2012 - Raleigh, NC, United States
Duration: Oct 15 2012Oct 15 2012

Publication series

NameProceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security
ISSN (Print)1543-7221

Other

Other7th ACM Workshop on Scalable Trusted Computing, STC 2012
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityRaleigh, NC
Period10/15/1210/15/12

Keywords

  • Encrypted computation
  • Secure processors

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Software
  • Computer Networks and Communications

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