The Quest to Build Trust Earlier in Digital Design

TL;DR

This paper advocates for early-stage security tools in digital hardware design, emphasizing the importance of addressing hardware vulnerabilities during initial development phases to enhance trust and security.

Contribution

It presents a vision for developing tools and techniques to improve hardware security early in the digital design process, especially with hardware description languages.

Findings

Identifies challenges faced by design teams in securing hardware early.

Reviews recent literature on hardware security assessment methods.

Highlights opportunities with open-source hardware for security improvements.

Abstract

The ever-rising complexity of computer systems presents challenges for maintaining security and trust throughout their lifetime. As hardware forms the foundation of a secure system, we need tools and techniques that support computer hardware engineers to improve trust and help them address security concerns. This paper highlights a vision for tools and techniques to enhance the security of digital hardware in earlier stages of the digital design process, especially during design with hardware description languages. We discuss the challenges that design teams face and explore some recent literature on understanding, identifying, and mitigating hardware security weaknesses as early as possible. We highlight the opportunities that emerge with open-source hardware development and sketch some open questions that guide ongoing research in this domain.