Workshop on Hardware Security
Conducted a two-day workshop on Hardware Security along with Dr. Chester Rebeiro, IIT Madras.
The aim of the workshop was to provide an overview of the current state of Hardware Security research and was targeted towards folks from the industry and the government sector. The workshop had a mix of theory and lab sessions covering exploits and vulnerabilities at different supply-chain abstractions.
Overview:
According to Gartner reports, by 2020 there would be over 20.4 billion IoT devices; many of these devices would be deployed in safety critical applications ranging from health care to critical infrastructure. With the expanding electronics supply-chain, a large number of these devices are vulnerable to cyber-attacks that originate from the hardware. Hardware backdoors and trojans represent insidious threats to the security and integrity of computer systems, exploiting vulnerabilities at the foundational level of hardware components. These clandestine mechanisms are often intentionally inserted during the design, manufacturing, or supply chain process, posing significant risks to both individual users and organizations. At the other extreme, side-channel leakage emitted due to the device operation can be exploited to glean sensitive information. In this two-day workshop, we provide an introduction to Hardware Trojans, the various design strategies of the trojans, and state-of-the-art detection mechanisms. We also dwell into the realm of side-channel leakage and how chips can be reverse engineered.
Link to the introduction slides: