Hardware trust has become important and has seen major growth over the last several years. There is a large and active group of academic and industry researchers working on various aspects of the hardware trust problem. However, most research in this area is currently carried out in an ad-hoc fashion and results are reported using figures of merit that prevent objective cross-field comparisons of Trojan detection schemes.
A few benchmark circuits infected with hardware Trojans (called trust benchmarks) are developed. The trust benchmarks pass a thorough test procedure and several detection techniques. To support further validation of the trust benchmarks, hardware platforms are developed to validate trust benchmarks and a web portal is set up to make the benchmarks and hardware platforms available to help accelerate research in hardware security and trust. Technical meetings are scheduled to collect feedbacks from experts in the community about the benchmarks and hardware platforms.
The intellectual merit of this proposal include development of (i) a detailed taxonomy for Trojans, (ii) a set of static trust benchmarks, (iii) a number of hard-to-detect Trojans, (iv) hardware platforms for hardware emulation and validation of Trojan detection methods, and (v) a repository called Trust-Hub. A trust benchmark is selected for fabrication using the MOSIS program.
TrustHub has helped create a red team blue team penetration testing platform and helped foster hardware and embedded systems penetration testing activity. The project has helped create a security mindset in the participating undergraduate and graduate students. This project is developing example designs that the industry and DoD agency researchers can use to validate defenses tha they develop against hardware trojans. The material from this project has resulted in Labs that can be used in classes and course material in the area of Hardware Trust. Overall, the TrustHub project is creating awareness of the importance of hardware trust. Embedde Systems Challenges 2010 and 2011 have attracted over 40 participants (several graduate students and a few undergraduate students and one high school participant on the Case Western Team). This is a good source of employees for the companies and agencies that participated as judges and sponsors of this competition. Most importantly, ESC builds capacity in this important area of hardware cyber security that benefits the country. From a technical angle, ESC is a vital source of hardware trojan benchmarks and an important venue for blue team red team trust assessment of hardware defenses. The Trojans designed as part of the ESC are being made available through the Trust-Hub (www.trust-hub.org/). In ESC 2012, two designs from non NYU Poly teams are being considered as candidates for hacking in ESC 2012. The developed framework can be leveraged to conduct red team blue trust assessment of hardware designs. Broader participation: Two women students participated in ESC 2010 and two women students participated in 2011. A high school student participated in 2011.One woman scientist served as a judge. The project has been renewed as a full grant (from this planning grant) and is ongoing.
