About

This project investigates malicious modifications to integrated circuits — called hardware trojans — can disrupt wireless communication and leak sensitive information, and the threat is expected to grow as wireless phones and other devices evolve.

This project is supported by a $1 million grant that is part of a $37 million NSF initiative called Resilient and Intelligent Next-Generation Systems (RINGS), a public-private partnership aimed at accelerating the translation of research findings into new technologies. The program includes other universities, government agencies and industry partners, including Apple Inc., Ericsson, Google, IBM Corp., Intel Corp., Microsoft Corp., Nokia Corp., Qualcomm Inc. and VMware Inc. Industry partners are not involved in the UT Dallas research but might collaborate in the future.

This project is a collaborative effort between the Nosratinia Lab, led by Aria Nosratinia, and the TRELA lab, led by Prof. Yiorgos Makris.

Award Abstract

The next generation of wireless communication systems (NextG) presents a larger attack surface to malicious actors. The increased vulnerability is driven by many factors including the rising complexity of systems and algorithms, the blurring of the line between computing and communication, and the introduction of new technologies such as Internet of Things (IoT) that introduce devices from a globalized supply chain, whose provenance and security may be difficult to verify or guarantee. This project investigates the emerging risks from malicious modifications in hardware or software of NextG wireless communication systems, and devises techniques that improve the resilience of the next generation of communication systems against these risks. Malicious modifications can find their way into a communication system via software or firmware updates, which are nowadays common. Malicious hardware modifications have also evolved into a credible threat, due to the stretching of the integrated circuit (IC) fabrication supply chain that creates many opportunities for vulnerabilities to be inserted into a communication IC from design to fabrication. The project’s broader significance and importance are the protection of NextG systems against cyber threats, electrical and computer engineering curriculum development, and K-12 outreach.

More specifically, this project concentrates on the modification threats that infiltrate the physical layer of wireless communication systems, inflicting harm by compromising data, or hampering legitimate communication via jamming and denial of service. New classes of modification threats in the physical layer are identified, and their threat is quantitatively analyzed. The research project further studies methods to detect the presence of malicious modifications, an important step for their removal or neutralization. The performance of these detection techniques is studied under adversarial uncertainty. The project demonstrates and verifies the attacks, as well as detection and mitigation strategies, via a custom-designed hardware platform.