Keynote: Approaches for Trusted Electronic Systems in a Global Supply Chain and the US Chips Act

Shahin Tajik (Worcester Polytechnic Institute, US)

Abstract

The globalization of electronic systems’ fabrication has made some of our most critical systems vulnerable to supply chain attacks. Implanting hardware Trojan implants on printed circuit boards (PCBs) or replacing genuine components with counterfeit/recycled ones during system fabrication and assembly are examples of such attacks. Even after the deployment of these systems in the field, their security and integrity of them can be compromised by physical and cyberattacks. In this talk, first, we discuss why we should apply holistic security approaches at all levels of computing machines to address supply chain threats. Afterward, we explore potential state-of-the-art prevention- and detection-based countermeasures for achieving assurance for the microelectronic systems at various stages of design, manufacturing, and deployment. Moreover, we discuss how recent government funding programs, such as the U.S. CHIPS ACT, can expedite the discovery, prototyping, and implementation of novel, revolutionary, and self-contained anti-tamper solutions against supply chain attacks.

Curriculum Vitae

Dr. Shahin Tajik is an Assistant Professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). Before joining WPI, Dr. Tajik was an Assistant Research Professor at the Florida Institute for Cybersecurity (FICS) Research at the University of Florida. He received his Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering in 2017 from the working group SECT, a collaboration of the Technical University of Berlin and Deutsche Telekom Innovation Laboratories in Germany. His field of research includes non-invasive and semi-invasive attacks, Physically Unclonable Functions (PUFs), security evaluation of FPGAs, and designing tamper protection mechanisms. His ACM CCS’17 paper with the title "On the Power of Optical Contactless Probing: Attacking Bitstream Encryption of FPGAs" was awarded the 1st place in Applied Research Competition of European Cyber Security Awareness Week (CSAW) in 2017. He was also awarded with the best hardware demo at IEEE HOST 2020.