PRESS ANNOUNCEMENT
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Micro Digital Announces MCU Security Solution

Irvine, California, March 20, 2024 — We are pleased to announce the release of a new high-security solution for MCU-based products, such as IoT devices. It is based upon SMX® RTOS, with decades of experience, and is called SecureSMX®. It uses the hardware security features of Cortex-M-based processors to create hacker-proof, isolated partitions and to prevent nefarious hacker activities from within partitions.

SecureSMX provides solutions for existing systems wherein vulnerable code can be partitioned off from mission-critical code with little or no modification to the latter. Security improvement can be accomplished iteratively over time.

SecureSMX also provides secure frameworks for building new systems featuring baked-in security and strong enforcement of good programming practices. Time to implement security features can be repaid with reduced system integration and debug time and higher-quality code. In particular, agile and CI/CD practices can be employed for developing code in partitions. Portals, which provide the only communication between isolated partitions, establish inter-module APIs early in the development process, thus reducing misunderstandings.

Other features of SecureSMX are:

•  Full support for hmode/pmode/umode operation of Cortex-M processors. hmode is used for RTOS and system services. pmode allows easily partitioning vulnerable code, and then moving it to umode, where it is fully isolated and above the pmode barrier. The latter provides strong protection of underlying mission critical and security code in pmode.

•  SVC exception implementation permits tightly-controlled system services from umode. A shared, complete interface is provided, but it is also possible for partitions to have their own interfaces, thus increasing their isolation and limiting which services they may use.

•  Advanced MPU control with many innovative features that make full use of MPU protection, such as static regions, active regions, dynamic regions, auxiliary regions, protected stacks, protected messages, and memory waste reductions that overcome v7 and v8 MPU limitations.

•  Debugger plugin clearly shows Memory Protection Arrays per task and MPU regions.

•  Embedded heap, eheap, was developed for embedded systems and features configurable bins, self-testing, self-healing, integrated block pools for C++, and simple multi-heap support, which is needed for isolated partitions. It also features chunk merge control and automatic allocation failure recovery.

•  Partition portals for communication between isolated partitions, even for large multi-block transfers. These are primarily used to convert function call APIs to message-based APIs to achieve true partition isolation. This is especially needed for middleware such as file systems and protocol stacks, so that client tasks do not have access to their code and data nor to each other.

•  Runtime limiting allows trusted tasks to run freely while firmly limiting processor usage by untrusted tasks.

•  Tokens limit access to RTOS objects and operations upon them.

•  Removing ISR code from hmode, where a hacker can turn off the MPU, and putting it into an isolated umode partition, where the hacker is sandboxed.

•  Partition-specific stop, reboot, and update rather than full system stop, reboot, and update. In the event of an attack, these allow the system to continue doing its primary functions, thus giving the security team time to develop a patch.

•  Zero-day protection due to partition isolation.

•  Insider attack protection via siloing of development and support teams by means of hardware-enforced code partitioning. Only highly-trusted employees have access to mission-critical code and to the full system.

For further information, ebook, and modifiable demos please visit www.smxrtos.com/securesmx. Now is the time to build security into your device.