System Bits: Aug. 23


Monitor side-channel signals for IoT device security Thanks to a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) grant, Georgia Tech researchers are working to develop a new technique for wirelessly monitoring IoT devices for malicious software – without affecting the operation of the ubiquitous, and low-power equipment. The team said the technique will rely on receiving and analyzing s... » read more

Grappling With IoT Security


By Ed Sperling & Ernest Worthman As the IoT begins to take shape, the security implications of connecting devices and systems to the Internet and what needs to be done to secure them are coming into focus, as well. There is growing consensus across the semiconductor industry that many potential security holes remain, with new ones surfacing all the time. But there also is widespread r... » read more

Way Too Much Data


Moving to the next process nodes will produce volumes more data, forcing chipmakers to adopt more expensive hardware to process and utilize that data, more end-to-end methodologies, as well as using tools and approaches that in the past were frequently considered optional. Moreover, where that data needs to be dealt with is changing as companies adopt a "shift left" approach to developing so... » read more

Simulating For Security


When we think of the field of cryptography, we often tend to think of math-intensive software encryption schemes, algorithms trying to prevent sensitive data from getting into the wrong hands, and hackers poring over code searching for potential loopholes in data sent over secure channels. However, we must also consider the fact that data has to physically make its way through transistors, p... » read more

Executive Insight: Paul Kocher


Paul Kocher, president and chief scientist of Rambus' Cryptography Research Division, sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to talk about the state of security today and how it will be affected as more devices are connected. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE: The number of vulnerabilities is increasing. Are we making progress? Kocher: If your metric for progress is the... » read more

Security In 2.5D


The long-anticipated move to 2.5D and fan-outs is raising some familiar questions about security. Will multiple chips combined in an advanced package be as secure as SoCs where everything is integrated on the same die? The answer isn't a simple yes or no. Put in perspective, all chips are vulnerable to [getkc id="253" kc_name="side channel attacks"], hacking of memory—a risk that increases... » read more

Rising Threats From Differential Power Analysis


Differential power analysis (DPA) has been a threat vector on the chip landscape for a number of years. It was discovered around the mid 1990s by the teams at [getentity id="22671" e_name="Rambus"]’ Cryptography Research Division, and turned out to be a very effective tool for compromising the ubiquitous SIM card environment. “The most traditional market for DPA has been with smart cards... » read more

How Much Security Is Enough?


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss the current state of [getkc id="223" kc_name="security"] and what must be done in the future, with Denis Noël, head of cyber security solutions at [getentity id="22499" e_name="NXP"]; Serge Leef, vice president of new ventures at [getentity id="22017" e_name="Mentor Graphics"]; Andreas Kuehlman, senior vice president and general manager of the soft... » read more

Is The IoT Safe To Use?


By Ernest Worthman & Ed Sperling Data security has been a problem since well before the invention the computer, and it has been getting progressively more difficult to contain every year for the past eight decades. It was made much worse when computing was decentralized with the introduction of the IBM PC in 1981, made worse again when networking was introduced into corporations by Novell'... » read more

What EDA’s Big 3 Think Now


In the past two months the CEOs of Cadence, Synopsys and Mentor Graphics delivered their annual high-level messages to their respective user groups. Semiconductor Engineering attended all of the speeches at these conferences, as it did in 2014 (see story here). From a high level, the big issues for CEOs last year were Moore's Law, the costs of design, the impact of low power, and business-... » read more

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