MC2 Researchers Awarded MURI for Work on Hardware Security

Published May 5, 2014

Researchers at the University of Connecticut, the University of Maryland, and Rice University have been awarded a five-year, $7.5 million grant via an Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) MURI to address the topic of "Security Theory for Nano-Scale Devices." Ten researchers in multiple disciplines across the three institutions will collaborate to analyze and develop new security protections for nano-scale computer hardware.

The UMD portion of the work will be led by professors Ankur Srivastava and Gang Qu, members of the Maryland Cybersecurity Center (MC2) and faculty in the department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Their contributions to the research will leverage their expertise in hardware security, digital watermarking and fingerprinting for VLSI design, circuit obfuscation, design and implementation of physical unclonable functions, and 3-D integrated-circuit integration.

"Nano-scale devices pose both opportunities and challenges..."

Ankur Srivastava

"The development of hardware security for computer architecture based on integrated circuits has consistently grown over the past decade; however research into the security of nano-scale devices has been very limited," says Srivastava. "Nano-scale devices pose both opportunities and challenges," Srivastava adds. "Characterizing and modeling these devices, along with gaining an understanding of likely attacks and developing security properties to foil them, will enable us to create the kinds of devices that will meet the critical needs of the Department of Defense."