Secure Embedded Systems

Our group works on design and implementation aspects of security in embedded systems design. We work on secure protocols and cryptography implemented in embedded hardware and software. We develop appropriate countermeasures against implementation attacks. Our team's expertise covers multiple abstraction levels, including circuits, hardware micro-architecture, firmware, and platform-specific software. We are also working on methodologies, with a focus on the trade-off between system performance, system cost, and system security.

Research Projects
Open Positions
Students
Software and Artifacts
Media

Projects

National Institute of Standards and Technology Award 70NANB17H280 Efficiency of Logic Minimization Algorithms for Cryptographic Hardware Implementation Patrick Schaumont, Leyla Nazhandali	2017 - 2019
National Science Foundation Award 1704176 SaTC: CORE: Medium: Collaborative: Energy-Harvested Security for the Internet of Things Patrick Schaumont, Dong Ha, Chao Wang (USC)	2017 - 2021
Semiconductor Research Corporation Pre-computed Security Protocols for Energy Harvested IoT Patrick Schaumont	2017 - 2019
National Science Foundation Award 1617203 TWC: Small: Secure by Construction: An Automated Approach to Comprehensive Side Channel Resistance Chao Wang, Patrick Schaumont	2016 - 2019
Cisco CSR Grant Remote Device Integrity by Physical Proofs Patrick Schaumont	2015 - 2016
National Science Foundation Award 1441710 SaTC: STARSS: FAME: Fault-attack Awareness using Microprocessor Enhancements Patrick Schaumont, Leyla Nazhandali	2014 - 2017
ICTAS at Virginia Tech Synthesis of Software Countermeasures to Defend against Side-channel Attacks Chao Wang, Patrick Schaumont	2014 - 2015
National Science Foundation Award 1314598 TWC SBE: Medium: Collaborative: Dollars for Hertz: Making Trustworthy Spectrum Sharing Technically and Economically Viable Jung-Min Park, Patrick Schaumont	2013 - 2017
Intel Corporation Grant Embedded Systems Curriculum Patrick Schaumont	2013 - 2014
National Science Foundation Award 1115839 TC: Small: New Directions in Side Channel Attacks and Countermeasures Inyoung Kim, Patrick Schaumont	2011 - 2014
National Science Foundation Award 0964680 TC: Medium: From Statistics to Circuits: Foundations for Future On-chip Fingerprints Patrick Schaumont, Leyla Nazhandali, Inyoung Kim	2010 - 2013
National Science Foundation Award 0916763 NetSE: Cross-domain Design Tools for Sensor Network and Architecture Yaling Yang, Patrick Schaumont	2009 - 2012
National Science Foundation Award 0855095 II-NEW: Infrastructure to Collect and Analyze Circuit Variability in FPGAs Patrick Schaumont	2009 - 2012
National Institute for Standards and Technology Grant 60NANB10D004 Environment for Fair and Comprehensive Performance Evaluation of Cryptographic Hardware and Software Kris Gaj (GMU), Jens-Peter Kaps (GMU), Patrick Schaumont, Leyla Nazhandali, Daniel Bernstein (UIC)	2010 - 2012
National Science Foundation Award 0644070 CAREER: Hardware/Software Codesign for Secure Embedded Systems: Methods and Education Patrick Schaumont	2007 - 2011
ICTAS at Virginia Tech Unique and Unclonable On-chip Identifiers Patrick Schaumont, Leyla Nazhandali, Inyoung Kim	2009 - 2010
McQ Inc Authentication for DSP-based Sensor Nodes Patrick Schaumont	2008 - 2009
McQ Inc Security Measures Applicable to DSP Architectures Patrick Schaumont	2007 - 2008
ST MicroElectornics Electronic System Level Design Patrick Schaumont	2006 - 2007

Students

Current

Yuan Yao (PhD student)
Archanaa Santhana Krishnan (PhD student)
Pantea Kiaei (PhD student)
Tarun Kathuria (MS student)
Sam Cowley (BS student)

PhD Alumni

Bilgiday Yuce (PhD 2017)
- Current Position: Security Researcher at Intel, OR.
- Dissertation: "Fault Attacks on Embedded Software: New Directions in Modeling, Design, and Mitigation"
Nahid Farhady Ghalaty (PhD 2016)
- Current Position: R&D Associate Principal at Capital One, VA.
- Dissertation: "Fault Attacks on Cryptosystems: Novel Threat Models, Countermeasures and Evaluation Techniques" pdf
Aydin Aysu (PhD 2016).
- Current Position: Assistant Professor, North Carolina State University, NC (Fall 2018).
- Dissertation: "Resource-constrained and Resource-efficient Modern Cryptosystem Design" pdf
Mostafa Mohamed Ibrahim Taha (PhD 2014).
- Current Position: Assistant Professor, Carleton University (Canada).
- Dissertation: "Advances in the Side-Channel Analysis of Symmetric Cryptography" pdf
Abhranil Maiti (PhD 2012).
- Current Position: Security Researcher at Intel, OR
- Dissertation: "A Systematic Approach to Design an Efficient Physical Unclonable Function" pdf
Xu Eric Guo (PhD 2012).
- Current Position: Staff Security Engineer at Qualcomm, CA.
- Dissertation: "Secure and Efficient Implementations of Cryptographic Primitives" pdf
Zhimin Chen (PhD 2011).
- Current Position: Security Micro-Architect at Apple, CA
- Dissertation: "SCA-Resistant and High-Performance Embedded Cryptography using Instruction-Set Extensions and Multicore Processors". pdf

MS Alumni

Charles Suslowicz (MS 2018)
- Thesis: "Secure Intermittent Computing: Precomputation and Implementation" pdf
Conor Patrick (MS 2017)
- Thesis: "Software Protection against Fault and Side Channel Attacks"
Harsha Mandadi (MS 2017)
- Thesis: "Remote Integrity Checking using Multiple PUF based Component Identifiers"
Hemendra Rawat (MS 2016)
- Thesis: "Vector Instruction Set Extensions for Efficient and Reliable Computation of Keccak"
Carol Pinto (MS 2016)
- Thesis: "Optimization of Physical Unclonable Function Protocols for Lightweight Processing" pdf
Shravya Gaddam (MS 2016).
- Thesis: "Design and Implementation of PUF Based Protocols for Remote Integrity Verification" pdf
Ege Gulcan (MS 2015).
- Thesis: "Flexible and Lightweight Cryptographic Engines for Constrained Systems" pdf
Moein Pahlavan Yali (MS 2014).
- Thesis: "An Insightful Model for FGPA-based Hardware Acceleration in Modern Embedded Systems" pdf
Deepak Hanamant Mane (MS 2014).
- Thesis: "Energy-harvested Lightweight Cryptosystems" pdf
Krishna Chaitanya Pabbuleti (MS 2014).
- Thesis: "Performance Optimization of Public Key Cryptography on Embedded Platforms" pdf
Lyndon Judge (MS 2012).
- Thesis: "Design Methods for Cryptanalysis" pdf
Suvarna Mane (MS 2012).
- Thesis: "Implementation of SCA-Resistant CPU and an ECDLP Engine on FPGA Platform" pdf
Ambuj Sinha (MS 2011).
- Thesis: "Design Techniques for Side-channel Resistant Software" pdf
Srikrishna Iyer (MS 2011).
- Thesis: "A Unifying Interface Abstraction for Accelerated Computing in Sensor Nodes" pdf
Sergey Morozov (MS 2010).
- Thesis: "Elliptic Curve Cryptography on Heterogeneous Multicore Platform" pdf
Michael Gora (MS 2010).
- Thesis: "Securing Software Intellectual Property on Commodity and Legacy Embedded Systems" pdf
Christian Tergino (MS 2009).
- Thesis: "Efficient Binary Field Multiplication on a VLIW DSP" pdf
Pengyuan Yu (MS 2007).
- Thesis: "Implementation of a DPA-Resistant Circuit for FPGA" pdf
Eric Simpson (MS 2007).
- Thesis: "Runtime Intellectual Property Protection on Programmable Platforms" pdf

MEng Alumni

Abhishek Ajey Bendre (MEng 2018).
Mo Yang (MEng 2018).
Harika Santapuri (MEng 2016).
Sumedha Puppala (MEng 2015).
Nikhil Parlapalli (MEng 2015).
Anand Balakrishnan Reddy (MEng 2008).
Raghunandan Nagesh (MEng 2008).

BS Alumni

Riley Cooper (BS 2017)
Luke Wegryn (BS 2015)
Bishwamoy Sinha Roy (BS 2014).
Cameron Spiller (BS 2014).
Stephen Sul (BS 2014).
Shaishav Parekh (BS 2012).
Michael Cantrell (BS 2012).
Micah Boswell (BS 2012).
Billy Gomez (BS 2012).
Matthew Via (BS 2012).
Vikash Gunreddy (BS 2012).
Viktor Murillo (BS 2011).
Luke McHale (BS 2011).
Logan McDougall (BS 2011).
Jeff Casarona (BS 2010).

Software and Artifacts

FAME: Fault-attack Awareness using Microprocessor Enhancements.

This website collects the key findings of the FAME project. We designed and demonstrated two chips, FAME v1 and FAME v2, which implement a microprocessor with fault-attack detection and fault-attack response capabities.

Masked implementations of the Advanced Encryption Standard.

This github repository contains source code for masked implementations of AES, including (a) Byte-level masked AES, (b) bitsliced AES and (c) bitsliced masked AES. We release this source code under a GPL license.

Related Publication: Y. Yao, M. Yang, B. Yuce, C. Patrick, P. Schaumont, "Fault-Assisted Side-Channel Analysis of Masked Implementations," IEEE HOST Symposium 2018, May 2018, Washington, DC.

Fault-resistant implementation of the Advanced Encryption Standard.

This github repository contains source code for a bit-sliced implementation of AES, capable of handling fault detection in software. The bitsliced implementation provides intra-instruction redundancy, and is capable of handling fault attacks with high fault injection precision.

Related Publication: C. Patrick, B. Yuce, N. Farhady Ghalaty, P. Schaumont, "Lightweight Fault Attack Resistance in Software Using Intra-Instruction Redundancy," Selected Areas in Cryptography (SAC 2016), St. John's, Canada, August 2016.

Bitserial design of the SIMON Block Cipher.

A compact, FPGA-oriented Verilog implementation of the SIMON Block Cipher.

Related Publication: A. Aysu, E. Gulcan, P. Schaumont, "SIMON Says, Break Area Records of Block Ciphers on FPGAs," IEEE Embedded Systems Letters, 6(2):37-40, April 2014.

A test chip for the NIST competition of the SHA-3 standard.

We designed a chip with five finalist candidates for the SHA-3 competition organized by NIST. The webpage provides Verilog source code, scripts, and publications related to the chip design and the associated SHA-3 hardware benchmarking work. Unfortunately we are no longer handing out free test samples. All gone, sorry!

Related Publication: M. Srivastav, X. Guo, S. Huang, D. Ganta, M. B. Henry, L. Nazhandali, and P. Schaumont, "Design and Benchmarking of an ASIC with Five SHA-3 Finalist Candidates," Elsevier Microprocessors and Microsystems - Embedded Hardware Design (Special Issue on "Digital System Security and Safety"), 2012.

Physical Unclonable Function Measurement Database.

We have collected on-chip variability data of nearly 200 Spartan 3E FPGAs (90nm), designed functional prototypes of PUFs, analyzed aging effects, and created improved entropy extraction methods. The website provides access to our measurement data.

Related Publication: A. Maiti, J. Casarona, L. McHale, P. Schaumont "A Large Scale Characterization of RO-PUF," IEEE International Symposium on Hardware-Oriented Security and Trust (HOST 2010), Anaheim, June 2010.

GEZEL Language, Cosimulation Environment, and Code Generator.

GEZEL is a cycle-based hardware description language based on the Finite-State-Machine + Datapath (FSMD) model. The GEZEL tools offer stand-alone simulation, cosimulation, and code-generation into synthesizable (VHDL) code. Through user-defined library-block extensions in C++, new cosimulation interfaces can be added. GEZEL is open-source, largely in C++. Prepackaged binaries can be installed on Ubuntu systems.

Related Publication: P. Schaumont, I. Verbauwhede, "Interactive cosimulation with partial evaluation," 2004 Design Automation and Test in Europe (DATE 2004), February 2004.

Media

	CISCO and University Business Magazine, "Securing Electronic Devices by Creating Digital Fingerprints," 6/2/2016.
	Intel Software Academic Program, " Securing a Collaboration Between Intel® and the Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech," 2014.

Video

Presentation by Nahid Farhady Ghalaty, Chinmay Despande, Conor Patrick, Bilgiday Yuce, on the FAME Project sponsored through NSF and SRC (spring 2016).

Presentation by Aydin Aysu, Shravya Gaddam, Carol Pinto, Harsha Mandadi on the Remote PCB Integrity Checking project sponsosored through CISCO Inc and NSF (spring 2016).

CESCA Seminar by Patrick Schaumont (spring 2011).