"Researchers Develop Hardware-Cybersecurity Education Program With $400,000 NSF Grant"
Many commonly reported cyberattacks, such as distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, focus on software vulnerabilities. With the growing risks of corporate or state espionage via hardware, such as the hiding of malicious Trojan circuits on a motherboard by a third-party vendor, it is important to increase efforts in strengthening computer hardware security. A new initiative at the University of Kansas School of Engineering will design course modules to train students to build and maintain more secure computer hardware. This work is supported by a $400,000 grant from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC) program. Tamzidul Hoque, the principal investigator of the new grant, pointed out that hardware is often overlooked when thinking about cybersecurity, but it has become an essential component, considering the globalization of the electronic device supply chain. The design and manufacturing of hardware by several different vendors globally calls for improved hardware security. However, the focus areas in college and university courses for electrical and computer engineering, and computer science include software security rather than hardware security. Hoque and his colleagues plan to develop course modules on hardware security that can be integrated into existing courses seamlessly. They plan to offer them to colleges and universities across the U.S. for free. The modules will cover six critical hardware topics, including reverse engineering, IP protection through obfuscation, hardware Trojan attacks, physical unclonable functions (PUFs), bus snooping, and side-channel attacks. This article continues to discuss the need for more attention on computer hardware security and the new effort aimed at improving hardware cybersecurity education.