Sample Bytes to Protect Important Data from Unintentional Transmission in Advanced Embedded Device

Abstract

Illegal or unintentional file transmission of important data is a sensitive and main security issue in embedded and mobile devices. Within restricted resources such as small memory size and low battery capacity, simple and efficient method is needed to lessen much effort for preventing this illegal activity. Therefore, we discuss a protection technique taking into account these considerations. In our method, sample bytes are extracted from an important file and then it is used to prohibit illegal file transfer and modification. To avoid attacker’s easy prediction about the selection position of the sample bytes, it is selected within whole extent of the file by equal distribution and at the random location. To avoid huge increase of the number of the sample bytes, candidate sampling area size of the file is chosen carefully after the analysis of the length and number of files. Also, considering computational overhead to calculate the number and position of the sample bytes to be selected, we propose three types of sampling methods. And we will show the evaluation result of these methods and recommend proper sampling approach to embedded device with low computational power. With the help of this technique, it has advantages that data leakage can be protected and prohibited effectively and the device can be managed securely within low overhead.