Project Background
What is DSbD?
DSbD (Digital Security By Design) is a initiative created by the UK government through the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund (ISCF), the aim is to provide funding and encourage collaboration to help achieve the below goals (quoted from https://www.dsbd.tech/).
- “Increase cyber security for businesses, government and the wider public and economy;”
- “Increase productivity to the UK through reduction of days lost to cyber-attacks;”
- “Make the UK market-leader through new capabilities fostering the trust that is necessary for successful adoption of future digital services in areas such as artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of things (IoT).”
It does this by funding researched & development projects like Cheri, which aim to create these new hardware and software implementations to vastly improve device security.
https://www.ukri.org/our-work/our-main-funds/industrial-strategy-challenge-fund/
https://www.ukri.org/our-work/our-main-funds/industrial-strategy-challenge-fund/artificial-intelligence-and-data-economy/digital-security-by-design-challenge/
What is Cheri?
Cheri is a collaborative research project lead by the University of Cambridge, it is part of the DSbD initiative, the project has been running since 2010 and has many industry partners include ARM (One of the largest mobile processor designers globally).
https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/security/ctsrd/cheri/dsbd.html
DSbD and ARM
ARM has launched the Morello Program with funding from the UK government via their Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund.
https://developer.arm.com/architectures/cpu-architecture/a-profile/morello
ARM is working in collaboration with the DSbD project to look at how these new design could be implemented in hardware. The aim of the collaboration is to create a “Morello Board” which will implement the Cheri architecture in hardware and provide a testbed for further evaluation.
How does Oxon Tech fit into this?
A big part of the project is to look at how these architecture changes would be implemented in the real world. To achieve this funding opportunities were made available through Innovate UK. This is to allow Hardware and Software companies to start looking at this architecture and how it might be used and how easily existing projects could be ported to it.
https://www.ukri.org/news/blocking-cyber-vulnerabilities-furthered-by-digital-security-investment/
We are looking primarily looking at porting one of our existing embedded device projects to this architecture. We are also looking to keep these blog posts updated with information which may help future developers who may also look at porting some of the application to Cheri/Morello.
