Research Instrumentation for Advanced Hardware Reverse Engineering and Integrated Circuit Imaging

Major Goals: The requested equipment will form the centerpiece of the hardware reverse engineering laboratory at NYU and used to study several aspects of this emerging and critical threat model. It will contribute towards two broad research efforts that are already underway at NYU. These are: 1. IC camouflaging, an approach used to defend against attackers who try to extract the IC logic details using optical microscopy. Recently, in response to a call from DARPA, we have been investigated camouflaged cells whose functionality is doping concentration dependent. The security of our solution is intrinsically linked to the attackers' ability to extract doping concentrations using SCM or SSRM. However, this question is poorly addressed in literature and is the second motivation behind our request for the equipment. 2. IoT Security: Next generation devices, particularly those used in energy constrained environments are likely to use different types of non-volatile memory solutions. The data stored in these memories will include secret keys, biometrics, and other proprietary information. Can the data on these memories be extracted even if, for security reasons, the JTAG port and other access ports are protected? If so, what are the implications for security and forensics? And finally, if it is possible to extract secret bits based on microscopy, what can we do to defend against such attacks. To answer this final question, we need to have a good understanding of the attackers capabilities.