"Shape-Shifting Computer Chip Thwarts an Army of Hackers"

A team of researchers at the University of Michigan has developed a new secure computer processor called Morpheus that can thwart attacks from hackers by rapidly and continuously randomizing elements of code and data. The randomization of such elements makes it significantly more difficult to hack the processor. Last summer, over 500 security researchers tried hacking the Morpheus processor as part of the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) program to design a secure processor capable of protecting vulnerable software. All of them failed to hack the processor. Hackers must be familiar with the details of a processor's microarchitecture in order to place malicious code or malware onto vulnerable systems. Therefore, Morpheus randomizes these details to turn the computer into a puzzle that must be solved before a security exploit can be performed by hackers. Details, such as the commands executed by the processor or the format of program data, change between Morpheus machines. Software running on the Morpheus processor remains the same as these changes only occur at the microarchitecture level. A skilled hacker could reverse-engineer a Morpheus machine within a few hours. Therefore, Morpheus changes the microarchitecture once every few hundred milliseconds, thus requiring attackers to be fast at reverse-engineering the microarchitecture. The common approach behind computer security is to fix individual software flaws to prevent hacking. However, programmers need to write perfect software that has no bugs for patch-based techniques to succeed, which is considered impossible by many. The Morpheus processor's approach to security is to augment its underlying structure to make it harder for attackers to graft malware onto the device, which protects the vulnerable software running on it. This article continues to discuss how the Morpheus processor can thwart hackers, the research behind this processor, and other research efforts surrounding the use of hardware to help strengthen software security. 

The Conversation reports "Shape-Shifting Computer Chip Thwarts an Army of Hackers"