Priority Program

The main objective of the proposed Priority Program is to understand the implications of emerging nano-electronics to system security, and specifically:

1. To assess possible security threats and vulnerabilities stemming from novel nano-electronics. Such weaknesses can be due to fundamental properties of nano-electronic devices, or result from designers neglecting security. One goal of the SPP is to take security into account during the complete development and product life cycle. A central challenge here is to establish the connection between hardware blocks vulnerable to attacks and the consequences of the attacks at the system level.
2. To develop innovative approaches for system security based on nano-electronics. Security requires hardware trust anchors, which are hard to design with current technologies. For example, all current solutions to the problem of secure storage of cryptographic keys have known weaknesses. This SPP will push the use of new technology features for secure trust anchors, e.g., building new types of secure memories or PUFs.

The SPP Nano Security will enforce strong cooperation between scientists working on lower and higher levels of abstraction to develop innovative solutions for omnipresent hardware trust anchors in future computing systems, including the Internet of Things. This SPP will give security designers a new set of methods and solutions for winning the race between attackers and defenders for the next decade.