Introduction to Hardware and IoT Security

Hardware has long been touted as a dependable and trustable entity than the software running on it. The illusion that attackers cannot easily access the isolated integrated circuit (IC) supply chain has once and again been invalidated by remotely activated hardware Trojan and untraceable break-ins of networking systems running on fake and subverted chips reported by businesses and military strategists, and confirmed by forensic security experts analyzing recent incidents. The situation was aggravated by the geographical dispersion of chip design activities and the heavy reliance on third-party hardware intellectual properties (IPs). Counterfeit chips (such as unauthorized copies, remarked/recycled dice, overproduced and subverted chips or cloned designs) pose a major threat to all stakeholders in the IC supply chain, from designers, manufacturers, system integrators to end users, in view of the severe consequence of potentially degraded quality, reliability and performance that they caused to the electronic equipment and critical infrastructure. Unfortunately, tools that can analyze the circuit netlist for malicious logic detection and full functionality recovery are lacking to prevent such design backdoors, counterfeit and malicious chips from infiltrated into the integrated circuit (IC) design and fabrication flow. This seminar addresses and reviews recent development in preventive countermeasures, post-manufacturing diagnosis techniques, and emerging security-enhanced primitives to avert these hardware security threats. This seminar also covers emerging topics where hardware platforms are playing an active role in system protection and intrusion detection. It aims to create an awareness of the ultimate challenges and solutions in addressing hardware security issues in the new age of the Internet of Things (IoT), where the intense interactions between devices and devices, and devices and humans have introduced new vulnerabilities of embedded devices and integrated electronic systems.