The Hack@DAC Story: Learnings from Organizing the World’s Largest Hardware Hacking Competition

Computing Stack

Challenges

Observed During Offensive Security Research at Intel

• Awareness of Hardware Common Weaknesses [CONCEPTS]
• Security-Aware Design Automation [TOOLS]
• “Shift-Left” to Detect & Fix Bugs in RTL [BEST PRACTICES]

1. Limited Awareness of HW Security Weaknesses

2. Need for Security-Aware Design Automation Tools

3. Need to Detect/Fix Bugs at RTL Design Phase

• SW bugs fixed with patches
• HW bugs are complicated to fix
  • Time consuming
  • Expensive
  • Cause brand damage

System on a Chip(Soc)

• Data Confidentiality
  • Protect secrets from unauthorized access
• Data Integrity
  • Protect data modification by untrusted agents
• Availablity
  • Protect against permanent damage to system
• Security features examples
  • Execution core & debug privilege checks
  • Access control
  • Memory encryption & integrity
  • Secure data erase
  • Power and thermal critical trip alerts

Hack@DAC

• A buggy SoC* framework for furthering innovation
  • Realistic security features, thread model, and security objectives
  • Vulnerabilities inspired by CVEs and real-world bugs
  • Open source and commercial tool support
• Benchmark for developing and testing HW security tools
  • Closest to commercial chip designs
• Participants gain hardware security assurance experience
  • Develop hacker mindset
  • Launchpad for researchers from adjacent areas (e.g., Firmware)

MITRE Hardware CWE

Security-Aware Tooling & Bug Detection

Hack@DAC SoC framework

• Realistic threat model and security objectives
• Closest available to commercial chip designs
• Uncover new classes of security vulnerabilities
• New tools for identifying weakness classes

Black Hat Sound Bytes

• Increased HW Security Awareness
  • MITRE HW CWE
  • Corpus of weaknesses and code examples
• Open-sourced buggy SoC design
  • Realistic security features
  • CVE-inspired vulnerabilities
  • Complexity matching commercial chips
• Innovations in HW security tooling
  • Tools that detect and patch bugs at RTL
• Participants developed hacker mindset

HACK THE SILICON