Columbia University

Adam Waksman

Lakshminarasimhan Sethumadhavan

Matthew Suozzo

Disclosed are devices, systems, apparatus, methods, products, media and other implementations, including a method that includes triggering a beacon circuit combined with a hardware-based protection module, included within a hardware device, the hardware-based protection module configured to provide protection against malicious implementations within the hardware device, with the beacon circuit being configured to provide a beacon output when triggered. The method further includes determining based on the beacon output provided by the triggered beacon circuit whether the hardware device includes at least one malicious implementation.

Implementations to facilitate hardware trust and security

Disclosed are devices, systems, apparatus, methods, products, media, and other implementations, including a method that includes computing for one or more inputs of a circuit associated metrics representative of degree of influence that values of each of the one or more inputs have on at least one output dependent on the one or more inputs, and determining based, at least in part, on the computed metrics associated with the one or more inputs of a more inputs whether the at least one output dependent on the one or more inputs is part of a potentially malicious implementation.

Identification of backdoors and backdoor triggers

Methods for preventing activation of hardware backdoors installed in a digital circuit, the digital circuit comprising one or more hardware units to be protected. A timer is repeatedly initiated for a period less than a validation epoch, and the hardware units are reset upon expiration of the timer to prevent activation of a time-based backdoor. Data being sent to the hardware unit is encrypted in an encryption element to render it unrecognizable to a single-shot cheat code hardware backdoor present in the hardware unit. The instructions being sent to the hardware unit are reordered randomly or pseudo-randomly, with determined sequential restraints, using an reordering element, to render an activation instruction sequence embedded in the instructions unrecognizable to a sequence cheat code hardware backdoor present in the hardware unit.

System and methods for silencing hardware backdoors

Systems and methods for detecting design-level attacks against a digital circuit which includes various functional units. A target unit is selected from among the functional units for monitoring and a predictor unit is arranged to receive events before they reach the target unit. A reactor unit is selected from among the functional units of the digital circuit which are arranged to receive events after they pass through the target unit. A monitor unit is arranged to receive predicted event messages from the predictor unit and actual event messages from the reactor unit. The monitor unit is configured to indicate an alarm based on a comparison of the predicted event messages received from the predictor unit and the actual event messages received from the reactor unit.

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Pleasantville, NY, United States of America

Adam Waksman