The Taub Faculty of Computer Science Events and Talks

Hardware security of integrated circuits (ICs) is a significant concern in many emerging market segments, such as intelligent transportation, innovative health care, sophisticated security systems, and smart energy applications. In particular, modern side-channel attacks that exploit information leaked by physical IC implementation pose a serious threat to the security of secret data on-chip. In this talk, a theoretical framework will be presented for actively detecting power analysis attacks (PAAs) – one of the commonly used side-channel attacks. The proposed approach is based on the observation that an externally connected device (e.g., resistor) affects the effective impedance of the integrated power grid, inducing non-typical voltage variations at the node of connection. Special emphasis will be made on analytic relations among PAAs, IC security, physical and electrical circuit characteristics, and system-wide performance and design costs. PAA detection framework will be presented, comprising circuits, algorithms, and design methodologies. A successful detection of power attack in a benchmarked IBM microprocessor will be demonstrated based on a PAA detection system designed and simulated in a 45 nm standard CMOS process. Guidelines for designing secure and efficient power delivery system will be discussed..