Architecture and Security

Secure Hardware Systems

Research Overview

Secure hardware-system design and architecture-security co-optimization define this direction. The team builds methods to evaluate proprietary designs with proprietary benchmarks under TEE/TrustZone settings and designs RTL instrumentation to gather security-performance evidence. Key directions include program-architecture interaction analysis for vulnerability, security-aware design-space exploration, and verification-aware microarchitecture exploration, with practical attention to how performance counters can both help and mislead security analysis.

Research Details

Current efforts in this area include Using Hardware Vulnerability Factors to Enhance AVF Analysis: Security/reliability analysis using hardware vulnerability factors. , Eliminating Microarchitectural Dependency from Architectural Vulnerability: More robust architectural vulnerability modeling across designs. , Detecting Malicious Attacks Exploiting Hardware Vulnerabilities Using Performance Counters: Performance-counter-driven attack detection and diagnosis. , SoK: The Challenges, Pitfalls, and Perils of Using Hardware Performance Counters for Security: Systematization of limitations and risks in counter-based security methods. , and A Case for Security-Aware Design-Space Exploration of Embedded Systems: Security-aware DSE strategies for embedded hardware systems. .