Impact Factor (2025): 6.9
DOI Prefix: 10.47001/IRJIET
Hardware
security in the cyber security domain had become a more of a controversial
topic over the past decade due to the introduction of new design technologies
in semiconductors and expansion of global supplier chains. In proportion to the
technological advancement of hardware production, the success rate of the
existing hardware attacks had also evolved over the time with a significantly
high rate of emergence of new attacking techniques and methods. Computing
hardware is becoming a more and more attractive attack surface due to several
reasons. The technology of analyzing the hardware components is becoming more
and more affordable and accessible to the general public than before. Also due
to the influx of IoT devices in the market, trend of simplifying the design
structure to decrease the power consumption and maximizing the processing speed
has become the theme of modern hardware implementations rather than the
security of the devices. When considering the market demand and user
requirements, it is more obvious for the computer manufacturers to give
priority to user requirements rather than stressing more on the security
aspects of their designs and devices. But there could be some catastrophic
outcomes if the security aspects of these hardware tends to fail in a critical
infrastructure, because these semiconductors are used in devices ranging from
simple IoT devices to more complex systems like SCADA systems. Therefore, it is
always a better approach to find a balance ground between the user requirement
as well as the security of the hardware, without compromising either of both in
the design and development. In this article, it presents an overall insight to
trends in Hardware Security domain, specifically related to modern computer
hardware design and manufacturing processes, distribution, usage, their
disposal and recycling. These various stages are analyzed under Three main
objectives of exposing the threats to computer hardware, suggesting
countermeasures to minimize or eliminate those threats and discussing about the
utilization of various design tools that can assist in the way to securing
these computer hardware systems in their day-to-day applications.
Country : Sri Lanka
IRJIET, Volume 8, Issue 1, January 2024 pp. 119-127