Keynote address: Design of secure systems - Where are the EDA tools?

Abstract

The design of security controllers, or more generally of microcontroller platforms implementing measures against hardware attacks, is still a very tedious handwork. Standardized and broadly available design tools as well as the necessary knowledge are rarely available and make secure hardware design a black art, known only within specialized companies building smart cards or Pay TV chips, for example. Secure hardware is, however, of increasing importance in many future embedded systems connected to cyber physical systems. Secure elements, i.e. special security chips or cores on a system on chip, are needed everywhere to protect these systems against physical attacks. Within this talk, the speaker will give some insight in the design flow of two security controller platforms and the special challenges encountered there. After summarizing the main attack scenarios for security hardware, a selection of countermeasures will be presented. These countermeasures have to be implemented and verified during various phases in the design flow. Some self-made tools and scripts have been used to achieve the result of a highly secure implementation, but there is a huge opportunity to accelerate implementation and verification steps. Furthermore, the knowledge about security could be captured inside tools and relieve designers of the task of becoming hardware security experts. The talk should motivate researchers in the EDA world to participate in the development of a new state-of-the-art design flow for secure hardware.