RINGS: Building Next Generation Resilient Wireless Systems from Unsecure Hardware

下一代（NextG）蜂窝无线网络（5G及以上）的设计、制造和部署越来越依赖于专业的高性能基带和射频（RF）硬件组件，这些组件通常由全球第三方提供。使用这些来自不同制造商的关键硬件组件会给关键的网络基础设施带来可怕的安全漏洞。该项目的总体目标是开发从可能不安全的硬件组件构建弹性和安全的NextG无线系统的方法。该项目关注的是一类特别重要的攻击，称为硬件木马，其中第三方提供的硬件组件被恶意修改，从网络节点（如蜂窝基站）内部发起攻击。一旦触发，这些攻击可能会导致服务降级或禁用，传输信号以破坏其他节点，或者窥探或泄露敏感数据。该项目结合了硬件安全和通信理论，在四个密切相关的推力中检测和减轻这些攻击。Thrust 1开发了计算效率高的方法来检测基带和射频中硬件木马的存在。Thrust 2提供了严格的界限来估计未被检测到的硬件攻击的容量，并对硬件验证和潜在吞吐量下降的功率和计算进行了关键的优化。Thrust 3将这些方法扩展到网络设置，包括干扰和多用户攻击。Thrust 4开发了一个新颖而强大的评估平台，用于在高吞吐量毫米波软件定义无线电的基带和射频中实验硬件安全方法。私人机构将通过讲习班向更广泛的社区传播结果和数据。此外，pi在纽约大学教授安全和无线课程，并将研究和实验整合到他们的课堂和课堂项目中。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The design, manufacturing, and deployment of next generation (NextG) cellular wireless networks (5G and beyond) is increasingly relying on specialized, high-performance baseband and radio frequency (RF) hardware components, often supplied by third parties across the globe. The use of these critical of hardware components sourced from diverse manufacturers introduces formidable security vulnerabilities into critical network infrastructure. The broad goal of this project is to develop methods to build resilient and secure NextG wireless systems from potentially unsecure hardware components. This project focuses on a particularly important class of attacks called hardware Trojans, where hardware components supplied by a third party are maliciously altered to launch an attack from within a network node, such as a cellular base station. Once triggered, these attacks can degrade or disable service, transmit signals to disrupt other nodes, or snoop or leak sensitive data.The project combines theory in hardware security and communications theory to detect and mitigate these attacks in four closely related thrusts. Thrust 1 develops computationally efficient methods to detect the presence of hardware Trojans in both the baseband and RF. Thrust 2 provides rigorous bounds to estimate the capacity of undetected hardware attacks and enables a critical optimization of the power and computation on hardware verification and potential throughput degradation. Thrust 3 extends these methods to network settings, including jamming and multi-user attacks. Thrust 4 develops a novel and powerful evaluation platform to experiment with hardware security methods in both the baseband and RF in a high throughput millimeter wave software defined radio.The PIs will disseminate the results and data to the wider community through workshops. In addition, the PIs teach security and wireless classes at NYU and will integrate the research and experiments in their classes and class projects.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.