Systems, Methods And Computer Program Products For Leakage-proof Program Partitioning

Abstract

Systems, methods and computer program products partition a whole program when it does not fit in a device's memory. Minimal, safe program partitions are downloaded from the server on demand into the embedded device just before their execution. Code and data of the program are partitioned such that no information regarding the control flow behavior of the program is leaked out. Thus, by observing the program partitions that are downloaded from the server to the device, an attacker is unable to guess which branches are taken in the program and what is the control flow of the program. This property of tamper resistance is valuable for secure embedded devices, such as smart cards, which could hold sensitive information and/or carry out critical computation such as financial transactions.