Hardware cyber security
Serge Leef · 2014
The attacks targeting hardware range from IP piracy to data theft to intentional hardware compromise and sabotage. Of particular concern are systemic, or combined, attacks that include both software and hardware elements: as the secure computing architectures, such as Intel TPM or ARM TrustZone, become more common, their hardware-based trust anchors will become attractive targets for hardware-based attacks whose goal is to create a vulnerability in the supposedly secure software. Design of the trusted IC requires awareness of the security needs at every step of the physical design flow to combat this wide range of threats. Some of the security needs can be served by the EDA (Electronic Design Automation) tools specifically targeting threat detection and verification of design security and integrity. Other threats can only be resisted using special design elements and properties, such as on-chip encryption and trust verification. Designing these secure elements, as well as protecting them from hardware attacks, will also require specialized EDA tools.