Aged but Fit: Long Lasting Security for Trusted Platforms

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Amir Moradi
• Subject Area: Security and Dependability, Operating-, Communication- and Distributed Systems ; Computer Architecture, Embedded and Massively Parallel Systems
• Term: from 2019 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 418658052

With the aggressive scaling of process technology, time-dependent reliability degradations, so-called aging is becoming more severe in CMOS nanotechnologies. Aging changes the specifications of transistors during the time and in turn, the timing and power consumption of the underlying devices. For cryptographic devices, aging is not only crucial from the reliability point of view but also needs a thorough consideration from security perspective as aging-related degradations may benefit the adversaries in leaking sensitive information through side-channel analysis and fault-injection attacks or via Trojan insertion. Although aging-related reliability degradation has been extensively addressed in recent years, the impact of aging on the security of cryptographic devices has remained largely unexplored. Cryptographic devices have a broad range of applications dealing with confidentail data. Due to sensitivity of such applications, there is a thorough need to address the security of these devices with respect to aging. To alleviate this problem, this proposal is structured around the following topics: (i) leveraging the security of cryptographic devices via designing aging-aware countermeasures that circumvent active and passive physical attacks, (ii) revisiting Trojan detection schemes in cryptographic devices with respect to aging effects, (iii) novel developments with respect to aging-aware PUF constructions.Deploying the state-of-the-art aging mitigation schemes can enhance device reliability by prolonging its lifetime and postponing observation of aging-related malfunction, yet these schemes cannot thoroughly address security concerns of cryptographic devices, as even small aging-induced imbalances can compromise the countermeasures leveraged to protect against physical attacks. As a consequence, an adversary may maliciously accelerate aging to thwart the protection schemes. On the other hand, aging may be beneficail to harden particular physical attacks or to weaken certain Trojan activation mechanisms. As an example, we can refer to profiling SCA attacks, where side-channel signature of different devices are compared. This project will address the shortcoming of existing schemes by developing aging-aware solutions. The outcome of this research will be evaluated on FPGA fabrics and ASIC prototypes.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: USA
• Cooperation Partner: Professorin Dr. Naghmeh Karimi