Pre-silicon Identification of Security Vulnerabilities

Cyber physical systems are dependent on a secure root of trust in silicon to ensure that hackers with physical access cannot gain control of the device or access critical data. The silicon powering these devices is delivered through a complex global supply chain which presents numerous opportunities for security vulnerabilities to be introduced at every stage in the lifecycle. In this talk we will begin with the motives for hacking hardware and how adversaries use side channel leakage and fault injection to exploit device vulnerabilities. We will then explore how these vulnerabilities can be detected at RTL and netlist levels to perform pre-silicon risk analysis. Lastly, we will outline what countermeasures can be deployed at the design stage for resilience to hardware attacks.

Doug Carson is a device security solution expert working in Edinburgh on hardware security test solutions for the Keysight Device Security Lab. During his career he as architected measurement, processing and security solutions for the full stack of telecoms covering device hardware, radio access and core network protocols. Doug has been involved in device security since 2016 as a co-author of a paper on power side channel analysis that is now the reference in the EMB3D™ framework. He currently works on market development activities for device security in Europe