Technical reports

Arm Morello Programme: Architectural security goals and known limitations

Robert N. M. Watson, Graeme Barnes, Jessica Clarke, Richard Grisenthwaite, Peter Sewell, Simon W. Moore, Jonathan Woodruff

July 2023, 8 pages

This work was supported by the Innovate UK project Digital Security by Design (DSbD) Technology Platform Prototype, 105694.

We gratefully acknowledge UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), who sponsored the creation of Morello, and also the significant investment by DARPA in supporting the creation of CHERI and its earlier prototypes.

We also acknowledge Arm Limited and Google, Inc.

DOI: 10.48456/tr-982

Abstract

Arm’s Morello prototype incorporates a first-generation CHERI-enabled Armv8-A CPU prototype. We have developed Morello to enable CHERI-based research by a growing community of researchers seeking access to potentially transformative architectural security improvement. This includes supporting experimentation, evaluation, and demonstration across microarchitecture and software. Morello is an exciting opportunity to work with – and improve – CHERI, and we seek your help and collaboration in preparing CHERI for mainstream use.

The purpose of this document is to lay out the specific architectural security objectives of the Arm Morello prototype, as well as areas that fell out of scope for the project. We invite not only your feedback, but also your collaboration, in helping us to create a future class of CHERI-extended processors that dramatically enhance software security.

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BibTeX record

@TechReport{UCAM-CL-TR-982,
  author =	 {Watson, Robert N. M. and Barnes, Graeme and Clarke, Jessica
          	  and Grisenthwaite, Richard and Sewell, Peter and Moore,
          	  Simon W. and Woodruff, Jonathan},
  title = 	 {{Arm Morello Programme: Architectural security goals and
         	   known limitations}},
  year = 	 2023,
  month = 	 jul,
  url = 	 {https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/techreports/UCAM-CL-TR-982.pdf},
  institution =  {University of Cambridge, Computer Laboratory},
  doi = 	 {10.48456/tr-982},
  number = 	 {UCAM-CL-TR-982}
}