Raising the Bar for Hardware Security: Physical Layer Security in Standard CMOS

Abstract

As the sophistication of attacks on secured systems extends to the international electronic borders, there exists an increased need for enhanced physical layer security in silicon in order to protect sensitive information such as encryption keys used in most security systems. With hardware security as one of the new primary requirements for many, if not most, system architectures, new questions are being asked of various memory technologies in order to prohibit the reverse engineering or break down of the overall system for the life of that security system, standard, and/or protocol. One of the most relevant questions to the topic of hardware security is, "How physically secure is the underlying memory technology?" Equally important is the question of securing sensitive encryption keys throughout the manufacturing process. These two hardware security factors are important since encryption is only as robust as the ability for any encryption based system to keep the encryption key hidden. A new embedded permanent memory technology based on a standard logic CMOS antifuse provides unprecedented physical layer security for security applications such as HDCP (High bandwidth Digital Content Protection) and AACS (Advanced Access Content System), both of which require unique encryption keys for each hardware device. While these are commercial security standards used to protect digital media in the consumer marketplace, the same principals apply to the public sector. A CMOS logic antifuse technology, developed and patented by Kilopass, when combined with a robust key distribution, tracking, and management system, tailored for semiconductor manufacturing, provides end-to-end security for sensitive encryption keys from the author or originator of the encryption key through to the end product.