Hardware based protection against malwares by PUF based access control mechanism
Abstract
Malwares are software based destructive payloads that infect and damage computing systems. Malwares like ransomware have become a popular form that encrypts directories and corrupt systems. A more recent ransomware has appeared with the name, Petya. Petya ransomware encrypts the master boot record of the hard disk on which it is installed and sabotages the boot process. The current software based anti-virus programs rely on signature based malware detection, and such compute and resource extensive systems are only available for computers and not primarily designed for IoTs or embedded systems. For these automated malware development toolkits and more sophisticated malwares, the need of hardware based security solutions to prevent such attacks is inevitable. This paper proposes a hardware based architecture for access control and protection of pre-boot process and data against malwares.