Author's Latest Posts


Microarchitecture Vulnerabilities: Uncovering The Root Cause Weaknesses


In early 2018, the tech industry was shocked by the discovery of hardware microarchitecture vulnerabilities that bypassed decades of work put into software and application security. Meltdown and Spectre exploited performance features in modern application processors to leak sensitive information about victim programs to an adversary. This leakage occurs through the hardware itself, meaning th... » read more

Security Verification Of An Open-Source Hardware Root Of Trust


By Jason Oberg and Dominic Rizzo OpenTitan is a powerful open-source silicon root of trust project, designed from scratch as a transparent, trustworthy, and secure implementation for enterprises, platform providers, and chip manufacturers. It includes numerous hardware security features ranging from secure boot and remote attestation to secure storage of private user data. The open-source de... » read more

Building A More Secure U.S. Microelectronic Design Infrastructure


The security of the U.S. microelectronic designs and their supply chain is becoming a significantly growing concern for both commercial semiconductor companies and the Department of Defense (DoD). The industry has seen significant impact from both silicon shortages and vulnerabilities that have caused disruption in the assurance of microelectronics that power our autonomous vehicles, 5G, and co... » read more

Establishing A Special Interest Group On Common Hardware Weaknesses


It seems like almost every week yet another hardware security vulnerability is announced. Just last week a team of researchers disclosed a new attack called “Platypus”, an acronym for "Power Leakage Attacks: Targeting Your Protected User Secrets.” This is another attack exploiting the simple fact that hardware sits below the conventional security abstractions and finding a vulnerability i... » read more

Reducing Hardware Security Risk


In today’s world, hackers, computer viruses and cyber-terrorists are making headlines almost daily. Security has become a priority in all aspects of life, and most importantly, of our businesses. Recently hackers have been targeting the heart of our most complex systems, the Application Specific ICs (ASICs) and Systems on Chips (SoCs) that run them. The risk associated with these devices i... » read more