CS Special Seminar: Lachlan Gunn "Security mechanisms that cross abstraction layers: or, why do I keep designing protocols that need special hardware?"

Security mechanisms that cross abstraction layers: or, why do I keep designing protocols that need special hardware?

Lachlan Gunn
Aalto University
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Abstract: In recent years, security-focussed CPU extensions have gone from exotic rarities to standard features of modern hardware.  Implementing security features in hardware not only makes them more difficult to bypass, but by incorporating them into higher levels of the software stack, we can achieve outcomes that are not possible with software alone.  In this talk, I will discuss how this approach can be used to secure everything from function return addresses to outsourced computation, and how hardware security mechanisms will be at the core of heterogeneous and highly-distributed systems of the future.

Bio: Lachlan Gunn is a University Lecturer at the Department of Computer Science at Aalto University, where his research focuses on the use of hardware-based security mechanisms to protect everything from low-level data structures to high-level network protocols. He received a Ph.D in Electrical and Electronic Engineering, and Bachelors degrees in Electrical and Electronic Engineering, and Mathematical and Computer Sciences (Pure) from the University of Adelaide in Australia.