Using ARM TrustZone for Secure Resource Monitoring of IoT Devices Running Contiki-NG

Abstract: The rapid development of Internet of Things (IoT) devices has brought unparalleled convenience and efficiency to our daily lives. However, with this exponential growth comes the pressing need to address the critical security challenges posed by these interconnected devices. IoT devices are typically resource-constrained, lacking the robust computing power and memory capacity of traditional computing systems, which often leads to a lack of adequate security mechanisms and leaves them vulnerable to various attacks. This master’s thesis contributes by investigating a secure mechanism that utilizes the hardware isolation provided by the TrustZone technology found in ARM’s Cortex-M processors. TrustZone is a hardware-based security extension in ARM processors that enables a secure, isolated environment for executing sensitive code alongside a regular, non-secure operating system. This thesis uses this mechanism and implements a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) in the secure environment of TrustZone that monitors the resource usage of applications running in the non-secure operating system. The aim of the TEE is to monitor the network communication and the CPU usage of the applications running on the IoT device, protecting its integrity and detecting any abnormal behavior. The implementation is done inside the Contiki-NG operating system, a well-known operating system designed for constrained IoT devices. The thesis conducts a comprehensive evaluation of the developed security solution through extensive experiments using two micro-benchmarks. It analyzes the impact of the security mechanism on various aspects of the IoT device, such as runtime overhead, energy consumption, and memory requirements, while taking into account the resource constraints. Furthermore, the effectiveness of the security solution in identifying malicious activities and abnormal behaviors is thoroughly assessed. The findings demonstrate that the TrustZone-based security mechanism introduces relatively minimal overhead to the device’s operation, making it a viable option for IoT devices that can accommodate such slight performance impacts. The research sheds light on the critical issue of IoT device security, emphasizing the need for tailored solutions that consider the resource constraints of these devices. It presents an alternative solution that utilizes TrustZone’s hardware isolation to effectively monitor the applications running in IoT devices and opens a new approach to securing such kinds of devices.