Intellectual Property Exposure: Subverting and Securing Intellectual Property Encapsulation in Texas Instruments Microcontrollers

This repository contains the code associated with our IPE Exposure paper to appear at USENIX Security '24.

@inproceedings{bognar24exposure,
  author    = {Bognar, Marton and Magnus, Cas and Piessens, Frank and Van Bulck, Jo},
  title     = {Intellectual Property Exposure: Subverting and Securing {Intellectual Property Encapsulation} in {Texas Instruments} Microcontrollers},
  booktitle = {33rd {USENIX} Security Symposium ({USENIX} Security 24)},
  year      = 2024,
}

Artifact overview

The repository is organized according to the major claims made in the artifact evaluation appendix (currently under review), which we overview below.

Claim	Paper Ref	Directory	Description
--	--	00_helloworld	Sample CCS project with IPE enabled to test the experimental setup. See below for detailed instructions.
C1	§3 (Table 1)	01_attack_primitives	Minimal, standalone proof-of-concepts for our basic attack primitives: (1) controlled call corruption; (2) code-gadget reuse; (3) interrupt register state; (4) cache-timing side channel; (5) interrupt-latency side channel; (6) MPU controlled channel.
C2	§3.4 (Table 4)	02_covert_channel	Covert-channel evaluation on the MSP430FR5969.
C3	§4	03_end_to_end_attacks	End-to-end attack scenarios: (1) overwriting AES key; (2) inserting a leaky gadget; (3) overwriting ipe_init_struct to lift protection.
C4	§3.1	04_sancus_exploit	Proof-of-concept controlled call corruption exploit and mitigation on a modified version of Sancus on openMSP430.
C5	§6	05_framework	Software framework to improve the security of IPE-protected programs and mitigate our attacks.
C6	§6.4 (Tables 5 & 7)	06_benchmarks	Microbenchmark evaluation results + macrobenchmark for protected HACL* HMAC attestation.

Installation and setup instructions

1. Clone the repository

If you want to run the Sancus evaluation, make sure to clone the repository with git submodules:

$ git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/martonbognar/ipe-exposure

2. Install software dependencies

TI MSP430 development requires the Code Composer Studio (CCS) integrated development environment, which can be downloaded from the TI website. We used regular CCSTUDIO version 12.6.0, which can be downloaded and installed as follows (make sure to also install the drivers as shown by the last two lines!):

$ wget https://dr-download.ti.com/software-development/ide-configuration-compiler-or-debugger/MD-J1VdearkvK/12.6.0/CCS12.6.0.00008_linux-x64.tar.gz
$ tar -xvzf CCS12.6.0.00008_linux-x64.tar.gz
$ cd CCS12.6.0.00008_linux-x64/
$ ./ccs_setup_12.6.0.00008.run # choose ~/ti as installation directory
$ cd ~/ti/ccs1260/ccs/install_scripts/
$ sudo ./install_drivers.sh

If you want to use our software mitigation framework, install pycparser, pycparserext, and pyelftools as follows:

$ pip install -r 05_framework/framework/requirements.txt --no-deps

3. Running a sample CCS project

Individual projects from this repository can be imported in the CCS IDE to load them onto a connected MSP430 development board. Proceed as follows to run a simple "hello world" IPE program:

1. Launch the CCS IDE and create a new workspace in an empty directory when prompted on startup.
2. In CCS, choose File > Open Projects from File System. Now select the directory 00_helloworld in the cloned repository.
3. With the microcontroller connected to the system, start the debug session (F11, 🪲).
4. After successfully launching the debug session, resume (F8, ▶️) the program.
5. Expected output should now appear in the Console pane below:

----------
Reading secret from main: 1234 (IPE disabled)
Reading secret from IPE : 1234

6. In order to activate IPE, we need a hard reset. For this, first pause the running debug session (Alt+F8, ⏸️), then select "Hard Reset" from the dropdown next to the Reset button:
7. The microcontroller will now reboot with IPE enabled. After resuming (F8, ▶️) the program, you should see the following output in the Console pane:

----------
Reading secret from main: 3fff (IPE enabled)
Reading secret from IPE : 1234

8. The CCS debug session can now be terminated via the stop button ( 🟥 ).

Troubleshooting

💡 Every project directory contains a README with concise running instructions and expected output (copied from the main source file, usually main.c).

• Any Ultra-Low-Power Advisor remarks can be safely ignored by clicking Proceed.

• If you get an error about data verification, make sure that Target > MSP43x Options > On connect, erase main, information, and IP protected area is enabled in the debug configuration (dropdown next to Debug 🪲 button). This should already be the case for all CCS projects in this repository.