Hardware

This project addresses how semiconductor designers can verify the correctness of ICs that they source from possibly untrusted fabricators. Existing solutions to this problem are either based on legal and contractual obligations, or use post-fabrication IC testing, both of which are unsatisfactory or unsound. As a sound alternative, this project designs and fabricates verifiable hardware: ICs that provide proofs of their correctness for every input-output computation they perform in the field.

Current cloud computing platforms, mobile computing devices, and embedded devices all have the security weakness that they permit information flows that violate the confidentiality or integrity of information. This project explores an integrated approach in which software and hardware are co-designed with strong, comprehensive, verifiable security assurance. The goal is to develop a methodology for designing systems in which all forms of information flow are tracked, at both the hardware and software levels, and between these levels.

Electronics counterfeiting is a significant and growing problem for electronics manufacturers, system integrators, and end customers, with an estimated annual economic impact in billions of dollars. These counterfeit Integrated Circuits (ICs) can have degraded reliability, smaller operating ranges, or lower performance compared to the genuine article.

Field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) are hardware circuits that can be reconfigured by a system user after being deployed. FPGAs are a compelling alternative architecture that may allow hardware performance to continue to improve at a dramatic rate. Unfortunately, systems that incorporate an FPGA may allow a potentially untrusted user to reprogram hardware after it has been deployed. Such a scenario enables novel security attacks that can leak a user's private information or corrupt critical information stored on a system, but are performed entirely in hardware.

Hardware security, whether for attack or defense, differs from software, network, and data security in that attackers may find ways to physically tamper with devices without leaving a trace, and mislead the user to believe that the hardware is authentic and trustworthy. Furthermore, the advent of new attack modes, illegal recycling, and hard-to-detect Trojans make hardware protection an increasingly challenging task. Design of secure hardware integrated circuits requires novel approaches for authentication that are ideally based on multiple layers of protection.