Course on secure hardware design of silicon chips

Abstract

This paper describes the design and evaluation of a secure chip design module for graduate students and junior engineers with an electronics and computer engineering. This course has two broad goals, the first is to teach students how design complex systems on chips using industry standard tools and the second is to educate them on emerging hardware security threats and countermeasures. There are a number of strategies currently been employed to handle the rising complexity of chip design, namely: reuse, abstraction and automation. We aim to show how to employ these approaches to produce working systems within a time-constrained environment similar to that of IC design companies. One of the unique features of this module is its approach of treating hardware security as an integral part of the chip design process and as one of the design metrics which can be evaluated and optimised, this allows students to better understand the root causes of this issue and to think more constructively about potential countermeasures. The course is designed based on the principles of constructive alignment method and Kolb learning cycle. Detailed syllabus and assessment exercises are included. Feedback results from students surveys indicate that the module is very positively received.

Teaching Hardware Security: Earnings of an Introduction Proposed as an Escape Game

“…The introduction course is done in the form of a 90 minutes lecture. In the same way, in [9], the authors present a full course dedicated to hardware security. The paper doesn't explain in details the way the course is done.…”

“…The paper doesn't explain in details the way the course is done. More recently, Halak offers a full course on design and evaluation of secure chip [9]. This course seems to contain everything that must contain such a design course about hardware security.…”

AMUSE : l'escape game pour s'évader en toute sécurité

“…Le document n'explique pas en détail la façon dont le cours est fait. Plus récemment, Basel Halak propose un cours complet sur la conception et l'évaluation de la puce sécurisée (10). Ce cours semble contenir tout ce qui doit contenir un cours de conception sur la sécurité du matériel.…”

Embedding delay‐based physical unclonable functions in networks‐on‐chip

“…Chip authentication and protection have become an essential practice nowadays for strengthening the security of the designs integrated into heterogeneous many-core platforms. Enabling hardware security features has its own advantages such as per chip identification and thwarting software dependent malicious attacks [1,2]. Hardware watermarking has become a typical practice through the years for doing so [3].…”