TSV: A novel energy efficient Memory Integrity Verification scheme for embedded systems

Embedded systems are ubiquitous in this era of portable computing. These systems are empowered to access, store and transmit abundance of critical information. Thus their security becomes a prime concern. Moreover, most of these embedded devices often have to operate under insecure environments where the adversary may acquire physical access. To provide security, cryptographic security mechanisms could be employed in embedded systems. However, these mechanisms consume excessive energy that cannot be tolerated by the embedded systems. Therefore with the focus on achieving energy efficiency in cryptographic Memory Integrity Verification (MIV) mechanism, we present a novel energy efficient approach called Timestamps Verification (TSV) to provide Memory Integrity Verification in embedded systems. This paper elaborates the proposed approach along with its theoretical evaluation, simulation results, and experimental evaluation. The results prove that the energy savings in the TSV approach are in the range of 36–81% when compared with traditional MIV mechanisms. 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.