# LO-FAT: Low-Overhead Control Flow ATtestation in Hardware

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.03754 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03754/

## Key facts

- Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 12 Jun 2017.

## Built on by (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [Proof of Unlearning: Definitions and Instantiation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.11334/) (2022)
- [One for All and All for One: GNN-based Control-Flow Attestation for Embedded Devices](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.07465/) (2024)
- [VerifiableFL: Verifiable Claims for Federated Learning using Exclaves](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.10537/) (2024)
- [AttestLLM: Efficient Attestation Framework for Billion-scale On-device LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.06326/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Attacks targeting software on embedded systems are becoming increasingly prevalent. Remote attestation is a mechanism that allows establishing trust in embedded devices. However, existing attestation schemes are either static and cannot detect control-flow attacks, or require instrumentation of software incurring high performance overheads. To overcome these limitations, we present LO-FAT, the first practical hardware-based approach to control-flow attestation. By leveraging existing processor hardware features and commonly-used IP blocks, our approach enables efficient control-flow attestation without requiring software instrumentation. We show that our proof-of-concept implementation based on a RISC-V SoC incurs no processor stalls and requires reasonable area overhead.