Bell Labs Internship on Remote Attestation with Minimal Trusted Hardware (PhD)

Job Specifications

Job Description

The rapid growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) has introduced millions of edge devices connecting industrial systems to the Internet, driving Industry 4.0 but also creating major security risks. Due to their limited hardware security, computational power, and memory, these devices are highly vulnerable to remote attacks. To address this, establishing a root of trust through remote attestation has become essential for verifying device integrity.

Most state-of-the-art remote attestation methods are static, authenticating a device’s integrity using cryptographic signatures or MACs computed over a verifier’s challenge and the device’s binary code. While efficient, these methods only verify the binary itself and cannot detect runtime control flow attacks that hijack program execution without modifying code. Furthermore, many of these schemes depend on trusted hardware components such as TEEs to provide isolated measurement capabilities. However, these components add cost and complexity, making them unsuitable for low-end, resource-constrained edge devices. Consequently, there remains a gap in developing lightweight, dynamic attestation mechanisms that can ensure runtime integrity without relying on expensive hardware.

In this project, you will explore and solve the challenges related to building such a remote attestation technique tailored for edge devices. The approach extends attestation to verify not only static binaries but also the dynamic execution flow, providing resilience against advanced runtime and control flow hijacking attacks. It leverages lightweight, minimal hardware components, eliminating the need for costly external modules such as TEEs.

How You Will Contribute And What You Will Learn

You will be expected to get up to speed with a variety remote attestation techniques.
You will design a novel remote attestation system that provides strong runtime security guarantees for edge devices with minimal reliance on trusted hardware.
You will implement a working prototype and be involved in writing an academic paper related to the project.

Location: Antwerp (Belgium)

Key Skills And Experience

Student enrolled in Ph.D. Computer Science/Engineering.
Good system building skills.
Previous (or pending) publications in related domains are a strong plus.
Language skills: English
You must relocate to Belgium for the duration of the internship.
This is a paid internship.

About the Company

At Nokia, we create technology that helps the world act together. As a B2B technology innovation leader, we are pioneering the future where networks meet cloud to realize the full potential of digital in every industry. Through networks that sense, think and act, we work with our customers and partners to create the digital services and applications of the future. For our latest updates, please visit us online www.nokia.com To view open positions and to apply, please visit: www.nokia.com/careers Know more

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