The K2 Architecture for Trustworthy Hardware Security Modules
Anish Athalye, Frans Kaashoek, Nickolai Zeldovich, Joseph Tassarotti · 2023
K2 is a new architecture and verification approach for hardware security modules (HSMs). The K2 architecture's rigid separation between I/O, storage, and computation over secret state enables modular proofs and allows for software development and verification independent of hardware development and verification while still providing correctness and security guarantees about the composed system. For a key step of verification, K2 introduces a new tool called Chroniton that automatically proves timing properties of software running on a particular hardware implementation, ensuring the lack of timing side channels at a cycle-accurate level.