"Simulating a Secure Future"

According to Rajat Kumar, a Ph.D. student in Yehia Massoud's lab at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), it is not inconceivable for a malicious employee of a company that implants chips in about 50 percent of the world's computers to embed a Trojan in systems globally and hold the world to ransom. Massoud's group explores emerging technologies that could improve the security of chips. Their recent research reveals multifunctional logic gates that provide users with various hardware security benefits. These include improved device control, protection against tampering, watermarking, fingerprinting, and layout camouflage. Massoud explains that tampering with chips is possible even if a semiconductor foundry is trustworthy because an untrusted entity in the supply chain could tamper with chips. In a case involving chips for a country's defense force, a breach could compromise an entire country's security. Components sourced from a complex supply chain pose risks of intercepted and reverse-engineered classified chips, counterfeiting, and intellectual property theft. Kumar and colleagues delved into polymorphic gates made from nanoscale structures composed of an oxide layer sandwiched between two ferromagnetic layers as a secure alternative. This article continues to discuss the research on multifunctional logic gates offering hardware security advantages. 

King Abdullah University of Science and Technology reports "Simulating a Secure Future"