Hardware Security

Course: ESE5370

Units: 1.0 CU
Terms: Spring 2025
When: MW 1:45pm--3:15pm
Where: TBD
Instructor: DeHon

Required Prerequisite: ESE5190 or ESE5320 or CIS4710 or CIS5710 or CIS4480
Recommended Prerequisite: CIS54480/5480 and CIS4710/5710

URL: <http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~ese5370/>

Quick Links: [Project] [Grading] [Course Policies]

Catalog Level Description:

Modern computing devices and infrastructure manage and mediate critical systems and important information. How do we assure that these systems are available when we need them, are used only as intended, and only allow changes and disclosure of data as intended? Security is a cross-layer issue spanning the hardware-software stack for both attacks and protection. The root of many security vulnerabilities, as well as many potential solutions to address them, lie in the design of the hardware that supports the systems. This course reviews attacks and vulnerabilities and techniques to address them. It lays the groundwork to systematically address security from the hardware up. It reviews traditional challenges (e.g. buffer overflow, control flow hijacking), information leakage (e.g. timing, power consumption, RF emissions), emerging side-channel leakage (e.g. SPECTRE/Meltdown), and physical attacks (e.g., RowHammer, power, cryogenic) as well as well as various approaches to address them (e.g., Virtual Memory, Virtual Machines, capabilities, tagging, obfuscation, encryption). Concerns and solutions will include processor design, as well as custom hardware, networking, systems, and SoCs.

Project

There will be a final, research-oriented project on a topic related to hardware security.

Grading

Grading is based on:

Participation in Paper Discussion [30%]
Lead Discussion [15%]
Summarize Topic [15%]
Final Project [40%]

Policies

Writeups

Writeups must be done in electronic form and submitted through Canvas.

Follow course writeup guidelines for topic summaries.

ChatGPT or other AI Tools

Work-in-Progress: You may use ChatGPT for cleaning up the prose in your homework assignments and reports.

You must acknowledge the use in your writeup.
You are responsible for all content you turn in, including any parts produced by ChatGPT. Scrutinize anything it gives you for errors. Any errors or misrepresentations that it introduces will be your responsibility and you may lose points for it.

Homework Turnin

All assignments will be turned in electronically through the Penn Canvas website. Log in to canvas with your PennKey and password, then select ESE 5370 from the Courses and Groups dropdown menu. Select Assignments from the links on the left and select the assignment you wish to submit for. Submission should be as a single file (preferably .pdf). In some cases, there will be separate assignment submission slots for specific components of the assignment.

Collaboration

Writeups and project are individual work.

In general, you are expected to abide by Penn's Code of Academic Integrity. If there is any uncertainty, please ask.

Absentees

Use the absence reporting form in Path@Penn to report absences.

You are expected to participate in all discussions. If you must miss a discussion, you can recover credit by providing a short writeup for the paper discussion you missed.

Last modified: Tue Nov 5 10:28:37 EST 2024