Bell Labs Internship on Remote Attestation with Minimal Trusted Hardware (PhD)

Description du poste:

The rapid growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) has introduced millions of edge devices connecting industrial systems to the Internet, driving Industry 4.0 but also creating major security risks. Due to their limited hardware security, computational power, and memory, these devices are highly vulnerable to remote attacks. To address this, establishing a root of trust through remote attestation has become essential for verifying device integrity.

Most state-of-the-art remote attestation methods are static, authenticating a device's integrity using cryptographic signatures or MACs computed over a verifier's challenge and the device's binary code. While efficient, these methods only verify the binary itself and cannot detect runtime control flow attacks that hijack program execution without modifying code. Furthermore, many of these schemes depend on trusted hardware components such as TEEs to provide isolated measurement capabilities. However, these components add cost and complexity, making them unsuitable for low-end, resource-constrained edge devices. Consequently, there remains a gap in developing lightweight, dynamic attestation mechanisms that can ensure runtime integrity without relying on expensive hardware.

In this project, you will explore and solve the challenges related to building such a remote attestation technique tailored for edge devices. The approach extends attestation to verify not only static binaries but also the dynamic execution flow, providing resilience against advanced runtime and control flow hijacking attacks. It leverages lightweight, minimal hardware components, eliminating the need for costly external modules such as TEEs.

* You will be expected to get up to speed with a variety remote attestation techniques.
* You will design a novel remote attestation system that provides strong runtime security guarantees for edge devices with minimal reliance on trusted hardware.
* You will implement a working prototype and be involved in writing an academic paper related to the project.
Location: Antwerp (Belgium)

Profil requis du candidat:

* Student enrolled in Ph.D. Computer Science/Engineering.
* Good system building skills.
* Previous (or pending) publications in related domains are a strong plus.
* Language skills: English
* You must relocate to Belgium for the duration of the internship.
* This is a paid internship