Paper 2016/1193 Original: eprint.iacr.org/2016/1193 ↗

The Secret Processor Will Go to The Ball: Benchmark Insider-Proof Encrypted Computing

Abstract

`Encrypted computing' is an approach to the prevention of insider attacks by the privileged operator against the unprivileged user on a computation system. It requires a processor that works natively on encrypted data in user mode, and the security barrier that protects the user is hardware-based encryption, not access protocols. We report on progress and practical experience with our superscalar RISC class prototype processor for encrypted computing and the supporting software infrastructure. It has been shown formally impossible for operator mode to read (or write to order) the plaintext form of data originating from or being operated on in the user mode of this class of processor, given that the encryption is independently secure. This paper aims to alert the secure hardware community that encrypted computing is possibly practical, not only theoretically plausible. The standard Dhrystone benchmark reported here for AES-128 encrypted computation shows performance equivalent to a 433MHz classic Pentium at the prototype's 1GHz base clock.