New Horizons in Hardware Security

The proliferation of computing systems has been a key driver of innovation and productivity over the last several decades. During this time, semiconductors have continued to become more complex and affordable, driven by both physical (e.g. Moore's Law and Dennard Scaling) and economic (e.g. globalization) factors. This trend promises to continue into the foreseeable future. These decades of sustained growth have brought us to a clear inflection point. Widespread and affordable computing systems allow us to lead easier and more productive lives, but it also cements our reliance on these systems, making their security ever more essential. This is particularly true as hardware serves as the root-of-trust for an increasing number of systems. We are committed to the security of these systems. Our mission is to ensure that secure and trustworthy hardware is both robust and accessible.

Our current research explores the security ramifications of the rapid shift towards globalization in the semiconductor supply chain. Within a globalized supply chain, high-value intellectual property and design secrets must be exposed to untrusted third parties to enable chip fabrication. This raises concerns of intellectual property piracy, reverse engineering, and malicious hardware modification. The sheer number of companies and employees involved in the fabrication process in the modern era, shown below, is immense. Given that each of these supply-chain entities are provided with nearly complete design details, this shift towards globalization produces a massive attack surface that is a major concern for both government and private organizations, especially in the context of security-critical devices and military hardware. IC supply-chain security is routinely recognized as a seismic shift in the research landscape and a key risk factor capable of derailing future innovation.

We explore hardware security solutions with a focus on provable, system-level security guarantees, ranging from security-aware design automation algorithms that optimally construct architectures to the theoretical modeling of hardware security guarantees. At the core of all of our work is the use of deep and rigorous mathematical analysis and modeling. Our current areas of active research are outlined below. I invite you to check out our work in each of these areas by clicking the images to read more about what we are doing to drive the future of secure computing systems.

Current Research Projects