Fortifying NoC-Based Manycores: Distributed Monitoring to Detect Security Threats

As computing technology advances, manycore systems have become increasingly used due to their performance and parallel processing capabilities. However, these systems also present significant security risks, including threats from hardware Trojans, malicious applications, and peripherals capable of executing various attacks, such as denial-of-service, spoofing, and eavesdropping. Researchers have proposed several security enhancements to address these challenges, including establishing secure zones, authentication protocols, and securityaware routing algorithms. This paper introduces a distributed monitoring mechanism that can detect suspicious activities within NoC links, peripheral interfaces, and packet reception protocols, explicitly focusing on detecting DoS, spoofing, and eavesdropping attacks. We conducted a comprehensive attack campaign to evaluate the effectiveness of our monitoring mechanisms and test the platform's resilience. The results were promising, with the system successfully detecting all attacks and continuing to execute applications correctly. Although there was an average execution time penalty of 8.83%, which included the time taken to generate attack warnings from the monitoring mechanisms and apply countermeasures, this mechanism significantly enhanced the security of manycore systems.