Biblio

Cyber-physical systems (CPS) are state-of-the-art communication environments that offer various applications with distinct requirements. However, security in CPS is a nonnegotiable concept, since without a proper security mechanism the applications of CPS may risk human lives, the privacy of individuals, and system operations. In this paper, we focus on PHY-layer security approaches in CPS to prevent passive eavesdropping attacks, and we propose an integration of physical layer operations to enhance security. Thanks to the McEliece cryptosystem, error injection is firstly applied to information bits, which are encoded with the forward error correction (FEC) schemes. Golay and Hamming codes are selected as FEC schemes to satisfy power and computational efficiency. Then obtained codewords are transmitted across reliable intermediate relays to the legitimate receiver. As a performance metric, the decoding frame error rate of the eavesdropper is analytically obtained for the fragmentary existence of significant noise between relays and Eve. The simulation results validate the analytical calculations, and the obtained results show that the number of low-quality channels and the selected FEC scheme affects the performance of the proposed model.

The globalization of the integrated circuit supply chain has given rise to major security concerns ranging from intellectual property piracy to hardware Trojans. Logic encryption is a promising solution to tackle these threats. Recently, a Boolean satisfiability attack capable of unlocking existing logic encryption techniques was introduced. This attack initiated a paradigm shift in the design of logic encryption algorithms. However, recent approaches have been strongly focusing on low-cost countermeasures that unfortunately lead to low functional and structural corruption. In this paper, we show that a simple approach can offer provable security and more than 99% corruption if a higher area overhead is accepted. Our results strongly suggest that future proposals should consider higher overheads or more realistic circuit sizes for the evaluation of modern logic encryption algorithms.

The globalization of the IC supply chain has brought forth the era of fabless companies. Due to security issues during design and fabrication processes, various security concerns have risen, ranging from IP piracy and reverse engineering to hardware Trojans. Logic encryption has emerged as a mitigation against these threats. However, no generic metrics for quantifying the security of logic encryption algorithms has been reported so far, making it impossible to formally compare different approaches. In this paper, we propose a unifying metric, capturing the key security aspects of logic encryption algorithms. The metric is evaluated on state-of-the-art algorithms and benchmarks.

This work introduces a novel adaptation framework to energy-efficiently adapt small-sized circuits operating under scarce resources in dynamic environments, as autonomous swarm of sensory agents. This framework makes it possible to optimally configure the circuit based on three key mechanisms: (a) an off-line optimization phase relying on R2 indicator based Evolutionary Multi-objective Optimization Algorithm (EMOA), (b) an on-line phase based on hardware instincts and (c) the possibility to include the environment in the optimization loop. Specifically, the evolutionary algorithm is able to simultaneously determine an optimal combination of static settings and dynamic instinct for the hardware, considering highly dynamic environments. The instinct is then run on-line with minimal on-chip resources so that the circuit efficiently react to environmental changes. This framework is demonstrated on an ultrasonic communication system between energy-scarce wireless nodes. The proposed approach is environment-adaptive and enables power savings up to 45% for the same performance on the considered case studies.