Communications of the ACM
U.c. San Diego Researchers Build Tool to Help Secure Iot
A new tool developed at the University of California, San Diego will help hardware designers and system builders test the security of embedded devices.
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Hardware designers and system builders will be able to test the security of embedded devices using a new tool developed by computer scientists at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD).
The team has been researching Gate-Level Information Flow Tracking (GLIFT), and the tagging and tracking of critical pieces through hardware's security system serves as the foundation for the tool.
Researchers say it can detect security-specific properties within a hardware system, such as ensuring that a cryptographic key does not leak outside a chip's cryptographic core.
Some types of hardware can reveal that a device's cryptographic key is based on the amount of time it takes to encrypt information, but the tool can detect these timing channels. Moreover, the tool can detect integrity violations, when a critical subsystem within a device is affected by non-critical ones.
The researchers say the tool has the potential to help secure the Internet of Things. "Engineers traditionally design devices to be fast and use as little power as possible," says UCSD postdoctoral researcher Jonathan Valamehr. "Oftentimes, they don't design them with security in mind."
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