Leveraging the benefits of information flow tracking for detecting hardware design flaws

Hardware design weaknesses, when overlooked, can lead to security vulnerabilities. Their cost of fixing is higher the later they are found in the development life cycle. The challenges of detecting these issues in the early stages of hardware design, compared to software design, can be attributed to limited research or poorly defined design guidelines. Using the existing hardware design weakness classification by the MITRE Corporation, we evaluated how Information Flow Tracking (IFT) can be utilized to identify security weaknesses in hardware designs. First, we provide a classification of design weaknesses tailored to detection using IFT. Second, we present a case study to identify one of such weaknesses using an open-source IFT tool. Additionally, we discuss the challenges of using IFT to detect information-flow-based hardware design weaknesses.

Subjects

Common Weakness Enumeration

Hardware Design

Hardware Security

Information Flow Tracking

DDC Class

004: Computer Sciences

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Leveraging the benefits of information flow tracking for detecting hardware design flaws