Enhancing Java Runtime Environment for Smart Cards Against Runtime Attacks
Smart cards are mostly deployed in security-critical environments in order to provide a secure and trusted access to the provisioned services. These services are delivered to a cardholder using the Service Provider’s (SPs) applications on his or her smart
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Abstract. Smart cards are mostly deployed in security-critical environments in order to provide a secure and trusted access to the provisioned services. These services are delivered to a cardholder using the Service Provider’s (SPs) applications on his or her smart card(s). These applications are at their most vulnerable state when they are executing. There exist a variety of runtime attacks that can circumvent the security checks implemented either by the respective application or the runtime environment to protect the smart card platform, user and/or application. In this paper, we discuss the Java Runtime Environment and a potential threat model based on runtime attacks. Subsequently, we discussed the counter-measures that can be deployed to provide a secure and reliable execution platform, along with an evaluation of their effectiveness, incurred performance-penalty and latency.
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Introduction
An application on a smart card relies on the Smart Card Runtime Environment (SCRT) for secure and reliable execution. An SCRT contains a library of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) that provide a secure and reliable interface between the installed applications and on-card services. An SCRT is used in order to: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
Provide a secure and reliable program execution. Enforce an execution isolation and access to memory locations. Provide an interface to access cryptographic algorithms. Protect the platform and applications from malicious or ill-formed applications. Handle communication between applications and with external entities.
In early 2000, fault attacks became the modus operandi of adversaries to subvert the implemented cryptographic algorithms in the smart card industry. Since then the technology has evolved to counter these threats to some extent [3–5]. Althought, the full extent is not publically know, there has been a growing interest in fault injection and combined attacks [6–8] to subvert the protection mechanisms on a smart card. In combined attacks both the software (i.e. attacker’s application) and fault injection are used to achieve the objectives. In this paper, c Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015 G. Pernul et al. (Eds.): ESORICS 2015, Part II, LNCS 9327, pp. 541–560, 2015. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-24177-7 27
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R.N. Akram et al.
we analyse the attacks that target the SCRT and provide counter-measures. The attacks we have considered in this paper are fault and combined attacks targetted at the SCRT. In this paper, we focus on Java Cards; therefore, we will constantly refer to the Java Card Runtime Environment (JCRE) and it is used synonymously with SCRT. The rationale is that the JCRE has an open specification as compared to alternatives such as Multos, and new attacks mostly target Java Cards. 1.1
Contributions of the Paper
In this paper, we propose and evaluate the following: 1. A JCRE protection framework referred to as the “Runtime Protection Mechanism (RPM)”. 2. Inclusion of the application developer’s security requirements at the compilation of the applicat
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