Why It’s So Hard To Stop Cyber Attacks On ICs


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss security risks across multiple market segments with Helena Handschuh, security technologies fellow at Rambus; Mike Borza, principal security technologist for the Solutions Group at Synopsys; Steve Carlson, director of aerospace and defense solutions at Cadence; Alric Althoff, senior hardware security engineer at Tortuga Logic; and Joe Kiniry, princi... » read more

Make Hardware Strong With CWE


What is a weakness? And why should we care? These questions are relevant in probably any field or context you may think of, well beyond engineering or electronics. While in some cases the first-level answers might be obvious, in many others they are not. Generally, weaknesses are considered bad things that can lead to malfunctions, injuries, and other undesirable situations. In many cases, they... » read more

New Security Approaches, New Threats


New and different approaches to security are gaining a foothold as the life expectancy for advanced chips increases, and as emerging technologies such as quantum computing threaten to crack even the most complex encryption schemes. These approaches include everything from homomorphic encryption, where data is processed without being decrypted, to different ways of sending and receiving data ... » read more

Safeguarding Automotive Electronics


Modern automobiles can have up to 100 Electronic Control Units (ECUs) depending on their class, make, and model, with the number of ECUs rising even higher in the case of electric vehicles. An ECU is an embedded system in the car’s electronics. They are used to control all the vehicle's functions, including engine, powertrain, transmission, brakes, suspension, dashboard, entertainment system ... » read more

Capabilities In CAP, CHERI, And Morello


At the recent Arm DevSummit, one of the presentations mentioned CHERI and the Arm Morello board in passing. This was in the context of using capabilities (perhaps) in some future Arm processors to increase the amount of memory safety, and to protect against vulnerabilities like Spectre and Meltdown. I'd never heard of either, so I was intrigued and decided to look into the details. But the f... » read more

Effective Configuration Of Security Tools


To do a job well, you need the right tools. But it’s just as important—perhaps even more so—to use those tools correctly. A hammer will make things worse in your construction project if you’re trying to use it as a screwdriver or a drill. The same is true in software development. The intricacies of coding and the fact that it’s done by humans means that throughout the software deve... » read more

Blockchain Attempts To Secure The Supply Chain


Blockchain technology is starting to be deployed more widely In the battle against counterfeiting, often coupled with component IDs to allow device authentication. Securing the supply chain is a complex challenge, particularly as more IP from more vendors in more locations makes its way into chips, packages or even systems. Being able to attest to the history of the device to prove its prove... » read more

Isolate Security-Critical Applications On Zynq UltraScale+ Device


Implementing a TEE on the Zynq UltraScale+ platform (RFSoCs and MPSoCs) greatly reduces the attack surface of security-critical applications. Explore this white paper to find out • What a TEE is • How the requirements for a TEE are easily met on the Zynq UltraScale+ platform • Why a TEE is needed, even if hypervisors are used • An example architecture of Prove & Run’s Proven... » read more

IC Integrity Of Edge-Computing Processors: Meeting The Demands Of AI


If you ask most people, they would say that we’re living in an age of artificial intelligence (AI). But the reality is that we’re just getting started. The age of artificial intelligence is still in its infancy. So many of aspects of our lives involve technology but we’re still having to feed that technology or manually operate that technology in order get the results we want. Autonomous ... » 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

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