ABSTRACT:

Today’s challenge for our critical infrastructure is that many of the SCADA-related embedded system devices have poor physical security (easily accessible) and can be tampered with or altered in the supply chain or during their life cycles. This means that a hardware backdoor that is undetectable using current intrusion detection technology can easily be installed. Consequently, the authentication of the devices cannot be assured. This talk will give an overview of the following:

·         General Hardware Security Issues

·         Supply Chain Security Issues

·         Examples of Hardware Attacks

·         Hardware Trojan Taxonomy

·         Real-World Context: Smart Grid Advanced Metering Infrastructure

·         Hardware Trojan Detection Techniques (off-line)

·         Hardware Trojan Detection using Dynamic Response Characteristics (on-line)

BIOGRAPHY:

Nathan Edwardsis a current ECE Master's student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with research focused on the analog characteristics of circuit boards to determine if hardware backdoors can be detected during both a passive-monitor mode and an active mode. He is exploring several cost-effective methods to achieve this with commodity hardware along with the design guidelines to calibrate the sensitivity for various inter-chip communication bus speeds. Nathan has been a major contributor to the creation of a number of successful academic research embedded system devices and is currently developing a CAN Bus fault-tolerant system/fault injection testbench and a Smart Meter security research platform. Nathan is a current IEEE member and has worked in various technical positions for Medtronic, Salt River Project, Boeing, and Sandia National Laboratories (U.S. Dept. of Energy).