Hardware

Computers form the backbone of any modern society, and often process large amounts of sensitive and private information. To help secure the software, and the sensitive data, a number of secure hardware-software and processor architectures have been proposed. These architectures incorporate novel protection and defense mechanisms directly in the hardware where they cannot be modified or bypassed, unlike software protections.

Modifications to integrated circuits (ICs) or the insertion of foreign intellectual property pose a serious threat to U.S. sovereignty, as ICs are found in many consumer electronic devices, including phones, computers, and televisions. More importantly, many commercial and military U.S. assets rely on ICs for computation and management of critical infrastructure such as banking, energy, and defense systems. The primary impact of the proposed work is to improve the security of U.S.

The adoption of smartphones has steadily increased in the past few years, and smartphones have become the tool with which millions of users handle confidential information, such as financial and health-related data. As a result, these devices have become attractive targets for cybercriminals, who attempt to violate the trust assumptions underlying the smartphone platform in order to compromise the security and privacy of users.

This project addresses the need to train students, researchers, and practitioners on diverse hardware security and trust issues as well as emergent solutions. The primary goal is establishing a set of hardware security courseware and enabling adoption of these courseware through the development of an online Hardware Attack and Countermeasure Evaluation (HACE) Lab.

Smart phones have permeated all facets of our lives facilitating daily activities from shopping to social interactions. Mobile devices collect sensitive information about our behavior via various sensors. Operating systems (OS)enforce strict isolation between apps to protect data and complex permission management. Yet, apps get free access to hardware including CPU and caches. Access to shared hardware resources result in information leakage across apps. Microarchitectural attacks have already proven to succeed in stealing information on PC and even on virtualized cloud servers.