Exploitable Bugs in Hardware Designs

Abstract: As hardware designs have gotten larger and more complex, there are more security-critical vulnerabilities arising from incomplete and erroneous specifications, buggy designs and hidden and unexpected interactions between components. This breakout will look at the science of anticipating, measuring and counter-acting the effects of vulnerabilities resulting from hardware design and specification errors.

There are several key challenge problems in combating unintentional errors—as opposed to adversarial injected Trojans--in hardware designs.  The focus of this breakout is on architecture, design,  and formal verification methodology for detecting and correcting exploitable vulnerabilities in hardware. The breakout will identify the key challenges, and promising directions in this area.