SWATT: software-based attestation for embedded devices

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Abstract
We expect a future where we are surrounded by embed- ded devices, ranging from Java-enabled cell phones to sen- sor networks and smart appliances. An adversary can com- promise our privacy and safety by maliciously modifying the memory contents of these embedded devices. In this paper, we propose a SoftWare-based ATTestation technique (SWATT) to verify the memory contents of embedded de- vices and establish the absence of malicious changes to the memory contents. SWATT does not need physical access to the device's memory, yet provides memory content at- testation similar to TCG or NGSCB without requiring se- cure hardware. SWATT can detect any change in memory contents with high probability, thus detecting viruses, un - expected configuration settings, and Trojan Horses. To cir- cumvent SWATT, we expect that an attacker needs to change the hardware to hide memory content changes. We present an implementation of SWATT in off-the-shelf sensor network devices, which enables us to verify the con- tents of the program memory even while the sensor node is running.

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