CFRV: A Decentralized Control-Flow Attestation Schema Using Mutual Secret Sharing

Area of Science:

• Computer Science
• Cybersecurity
• Distributed Systems

Background:

• Control-flow attestation (CFA) is crucial for verifying software execution on remote devices, especially in the Internet of Things (IoT).
• Existing CFA mechanisms often rely on centralized trust, posing scalability and single-point failure issues for peer-to-peer IoT communication.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose and evaluate CFRV, a decentralized schema for control-flow attestation in IoT environments.
• To enhance the security and efficiency of remote device attestation through mutual verification and reduced reliance on Public Key Infrastructure (PKI).

Main Methods:

• Developed a decentralized control-flow attestation schema (CFRV) incorporating asymmetric secret slices for mutual attestation.
• Implemented a prototype toolbox on Raspberry Pi for proof-of-concept validation.
• Evaluated CFRV's performance against malicious verifiers, man-in-the-middle attacks, and compared its cryptographic operation duration with existing decentralized schemes.

Main Results:

• CFRV effectively protects the attestation process from malicious verifiers and man-in-the-middle attacks, specifically 'response defraud'.
• The mechanism reduces Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) usage to a single stage, saving computational resources on peer devices.
• Cryptographic operation duration was reduced by 40% compared to related decentralized schemes.

Conclusions:

• CFRV offers a scalable and secure decentralized solution for control-flow attestation in IoT networks.
• The proposed schema enhances device security through mutual attestation while optimizing computational costs and mitigating common attacks.