CHEST 2022 Research Project Abstracts

Abstract:
Emerging nanotechnologies intrinsically feature three exciting switching phenomena that can be directly applied to hardware security and trust: stochasticity, polymorphism, and non-volatility. These intrinsic phenomena not only require no hardware overhead, but also enable security capabilities that are impossible to achieve with conventional technologies. This project, therefore, aims to leverage these phenomena to develop security and trust solutions based on a wide range of emerging technologies. The results of this project will provide clear pathways toward drastically improving the effectiveness and efficiency through which computational systems can be made secure and trustworthy. Specifically, the overarching objective of this multi-year effort is to (i) identify mappings of novel device phenomena to security and trust applications, (ii) develop methods to exploit these intrinsic phenomena within efficient security and trust circuits, (iii) evaluate their hardware overhead and effectiveness in achieving security and trust, and (iv) develop roadmaps for efficiently using these phenomena within large-scale computing systems. During the first two years of this project, we proposed a logic locking solution which leverages all three pillars to devise the first solution that is secure against all known algorithmic and physical attacks, as well as a large-scale system approach that hybridizes this nanomagnet solution with CMOS to maximally exploit the features of both technologies. Furthermore, we have identified and are refining fundamental concepts which can serve as the basis for the development of additional security primitives. Accordingly, for the third year continuation of this project, we seek to develop circuits which will leverage stochasticity in commercially-available emerging technologies to mask power signatures, and to evaluate their overhead and effectiveness.

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