Note: The blog post below originally appeared on SEMI.

Protecting advanced computing infrastructure and the electronic devices that underpin our global economies, businesses and personal lives is essential in the face of growing cybersecurity threats. Cybersecurity protections have traditionally been focused on safeguarding software running on an existing electronic system that can be exploited by malware, trojans, or other malicious code. These threats can be hidden deep within an application, operating system, or BIOS.

However, we can no longer give short shrift to the possibility that security threats can infiltrate chip design. Malicious logic can lurk in the design, waiting to be triggered after the chip is manufactured and inside an electronic system. Recent headlines point to the vulnerability of hardware and how cyber threats now target the very building blocks of our digital infrastructure [1,2,3,4].

Hardware design threats can be introduced at various stages of the design flow including specification, architecture, RTL, gate, circuit, or layout. Addressing these threats during semiconductor design will require the industry to acknowledge the issues and re-think how designs are conceptualized and developed so that vulnerabilities can be mitigated as early as possible.
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