Hardware security as a discipline originated out of cryptographic engineering and involves

hardware design Processor design is a subfield of computer engineering and electronics engineering (fabrication) that deals with creating a processor, a key component of computer hardware. The design process involves choosing an instruction set and a certain exec ...

, access control,

secure multi-party computation Secure multi-party computation (also known as secure computation, multi-party computation (MPC) or privacy-preserving computation) is a subfield of cryptography with the goal of creating methods for parties to jointly compute a function over their ...

, secure key storage, ensuring code authenticity, measures to ensure that the supply chain that built the product is secure among other things. A

hardware security module A hardware security module (HSM) is a physical computing device that safeguards and manages secrets (most importantly digital keys), performs encryption and decryption functions for digital signatures, strong authentication and other cryptogr ...

(HSM) is a physical computing device that safeguards and manages digital keys for

strong authentication Strong authentication is a notion with several definitions. Strong (customer) authentication definitions Strong authentication is often confused with two-factor authentication (more generally known as multi-factor authentication), but strong a ...

and provides cryptoprocessing. These modules traditionally come in the form of a plug-in card or an external device that attaches directly to a computer or

network server In computing, a server is a piece of computer hardware or software (computer program) that provides functionality for other programs or devices, called " clients". This architecture is called the client–server model. Servers can provide variou ...

. Some providers in this discipline consider that the key difference between hardware security and

software security Application security (short AppSec) includes all tasks that introduce a secure software development life cycle to development teams. Its final goal is to improve security practices and, through that, to find, fix and preferably prevent security i ...

is that hardware security is implemented using "non- Turing-machine" logic (raw combinatorial logic or simple state machines). One approach, referred to as "hardsec", uses FPGAs to implement non-Turing-machine security controls as a way of combining the security of hardware with the flexibility of software. Hardware backdoors are backdoors in hardware. Conceptionally related, a hardware Trojan (HT) is a malicious modification of

electronic system Electronic may refer to: *Electronics, the science of how to control electric energy in semiconductor * ''Electronics'' (magazine), a defunct American trade journal *Electronic storage, the storage of data using an electronic device *Electronic co ...

, particularly in the context of integrated circuit. A

physical unclonable function A physical unclonable function (sometimes also called physically unclonable function, which refers to a weaker security metric than a physical unclonable function), or PUF, is a physical object that for a given input and conditions (challenge), pr ...

(PUF) is a physical entity that is embodied in a physical structure and is easy to evaluate but hard to predict. Further, an individual PUF device must be easy to make but practically impossible to duplicate, even given the exact manufacturing process that produced it. In this respect it is the hardware analog of a

one-way function In computer science, a one-way function is a function that is easy to compute on every input, but hard to invert given the image of a random input. Here, "easy" and "hard" are to be understood in the sense of computational complexity theory, s ...

. The name "physical unclonable function" might be a little misleading as some PUFs are clonable, and most PUFs are noisy and therefore do not achieve the requirements for a

function Function or functionality may refer to: Computing * Function key, a type of key on computer keyboards * Function model, a structured representation of processes in a system * Function object or functor or functionoid, a concept of object-oriente ...

. Today, PUFs are usually implemented in

integrated circuits An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit (also referred to as an IC, a chip, or a microchip) is a set of electronic circuits on one small flat piece (or "chip") of semiconductor material, usually silicon. Large numbers of tiny ...

and are typically used in applications with high security requirements. Many attacks on sensitive data and resources reported by organizations occur from within the organization itself.

References

{{Reflist

External links

*Hardsec: practical non-Turing-machine security for threat eliminatio
"Hardsec" concept outline
Computer hardware Computer security Cyberwarfare Product design

See also

References

External links