Hardware Security
(4 Credit Course)
COURSE OBJECTIVES:
To understand design and evaluation of hardware security primitives and their roles in
functional security and protection against supply chain issues.
To study all forms of side-channel attacks, namely, power side-channel attacks, timing
attacks, electromagnetic (EM) side-channel attacks, and fault-injection attacks.
To understand infrastructure-oriented attacks with focus on scan and JTAG. Different
forms of information leakage attacks using on-chip test/debug infrastructure
To study system-level attacks and countermeasures, possibilities of exploiting hardware
security vulnerabilities by system/application software and SoC security architecture for
secure systems. Assets in a SoC are major targets of software attacks.
COURSE CONTENT:
Unit 1: INTRODUCTION TO HARDWARE SECURITY:
Overview of a computing system, layers of a computing system, what is hardware security,
hardware security vs. Hardware trust, attacks, vulnerabilities, and countermeasures, conflict
between security and test/debug, evolution of hardware security: a brief historical perspective,
bird’s eye view, hands-on approach.
HARDWARE TROJANS: Introduction, SoC Design Flow, Hardware Trojans, Hardware Trojans
in FPGA Designs, Hardware Trojans Taxonomy, Trust Bench marks, Counter measures Against
Hardware Trojans, Hands-on Experiment: Hardware Trojan Attacks. 14 hours
Unit 2: HARDWARE SECURITY PRIMITIVES
Introduction, Preliminaries, Physical Unclonable Function, True Random Number Generator,
Design for Anti-Counterfeit, Existing Challenges and Atta, Primitive Designs with Emerging Nano
devices, Hands-on Experiment: Hardware Security Primitives (PUFs and TRNGs) 10 hours
Unit 3: SIDE-CHANNEL ATTACKS
Introduction, Background on Side-Channel Attacks, Power Analysis Attacks, Electromagnetic (EM)
Side-Channel Attacks, Fault Injection Attacks, Timing Attacks, Covert Channels, Hands-on
Experiment: Side-Channel Attack. 12 hours
Unit 4: TEST-ORIENTED ATTACKS
Introduction, Scan-Based Attacks, JTAG-Based Attacks, Hands-on Experiment: JTAG Attack,
Exercises. 10 hours
Unit 5: SYSTEM LEVEL ATTACKS & COUNTER MEASURES
Introduction, Background on SoC Design, SoC Security Requirements, Security Policy
Enforcement, Secure SoC Design Process, Threat Modelling, Hands-on Experiment: SoC Security
Policy, Exercises. 10 hours
Text Book:
1. Mark Tehranipoor and Swarup Bhunia – “Hardware Security: A Hands-on Learning
Approach” Morgan Kaufmann Publications, 2019.
