TC: Large: Collaborative Research: 3Dsec: Trustworthy System Security through 3-D Integrated Hardware

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While hardware resources for computation and data storage are now abundant,economic factors prevent specialized hardware security mechanisms from beingintegrated into commodity parts. System owners are caught between the need to exploitcheap, fast, commodity microprocessors and the need to ensure that critical securityproperties hold.This research will explore a novel way to augment commodity hardware after fabricationto enhance secure operation. The basic approach is to add a separate silicon layer,housing select security features, onto an existing integrated circuit. This 3-D Integrationdecouples the function and economics of security policy enforcement from theunderlying computing hardware. As a result, security enhancements are manufacturingoptions applicable only to those systems that require them, which resolves theeconomic quandary. We plan to identify a minimal and realizable set of circuit-levelsecurity capabilities enabled by this approach, which can be judiciously controlled bythe software layers. This will significantly assist in reducing both the software complexityoften associated with security mechanisms and system vulnerabilities.This research introduces a fundamentally new method to incorporate securitymechanisms into hardware and has the potential to significantly shift the economics oftrustworthy systems. A broader impact will result through collaborative and educationalactivities. Graduate and undergraduate student research associates will transferknowledge to future teachers, researchers and Information Assurance professionals;and project publications will provide direct technical transfer to the embedded-systemsand hardware-design communities.