A foundry's view of hardware security
Shih‐Lien Lu · 2018
A system is as secure as its weakest link. Current computing systems employ a multiple-layer approach to build a trusted environment. At the bottom of this multi-layer approach is a hardware root of trust which other layers build upon. It is important to assure this root of trust is secure and free from any weakness. Recently there is surge of research topics on hardware security. In this talk we first narrow the topic a bit and outline a more restricted definition of hardware security. Upon this tighter definition we try to explain why it is so hard to defend hardware attacks. We will give example from the recent hardware attacks. We, then, focus on a few topics related to hardware security including hardware Trojans and IC counterfeiting. We argue why it is very unlikely for a reputable foundry such as TSMC to plant them. On IC counterfeiting, there have been work on employing Physically Unclonable Function (PUF) to prevent counterfeiting. In this talk we will attempt to explain the difference between testing of these hardware security elements from testing of standard logic elements. We will also clarify that foundry is in the best position to work with customers directly in building these elements such as Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) and Physical Random Bits Generators (PRBGs).