DURIP Scanning Microwave Impedance Microscopy for Memory Assurance (SMIM)
Abstract
Funds are sought by university of Florida to acquire a Bruker Peakforce- sMIM SPM Configuration AFM that will support education andresearch on hardware security and trust assessment at the nanoscale. The globalization of the electronics industry and outsourcing of IC fabrication to offshore foundries have resulted in longer supply chain and risen critical challenges for Department of Defense(DOD) including (i) ease of cloning and reverse engineering, (ii) development of advanced physical attacks (iii) sub-standard IC quality and more importantly detection of counterfeit operations. Duplicating the profitable electronic ICs in the market is a profit-making method for an adversary. Manufacturers could steal intellectual property (IP) from a device and mix it with their own IP later to disguise the theft. Secrets from the device could also be stolen to either produce a competitive product or to steal a service (e.g., firmware). Such attacks, unfortunately, make the news more frequentlythan before, hence there is a need to develop capabilities to perform a detailed security assessment of integrated circuits using physical inspection methods. Such problems also have widespread implications for critical US military, financial, power, space, and transportation systems. The Peakforce-sMIM is a perfect tool to understand such invasive attacks and their purpose, a detailed analysis of the IC#s features is required to build countermeasures. The integration of the Peakforce-sMIM into SeCurity and AssuraNce (SCAN) laboratory, which supports more than 20 faculties across the college of engineering and over 110 PhD students, will establish a novel workflow for non-destructive inspection of suspectedIC physical traits pertaining to the silicon oxide films and doping regions in advanced technology node flip-chips. Ongoing research projects at UF that will greatly benefit from the sMIM to educate the next generation of workforce for DOD on physical assurance topics including butnot limited to IC Reverse Engineering, IC tampering , counterfeit detection, emerging nano-electronics devices and defense-in-depth for protecting DOD ICs fabricated in untrusted foundries. The team will develop virtual labs to promote interest from undergraduates and high school students. We shall also work closely for workforce development and distance education related tothe different modes of AFM for assurance and IC hardware security through on-site training events and online tutorials. In addition, Florida Applied Research and Engineering (FLARE) at UF, which is a classified contractor, will be working closely with SCAN lab facilities and the sought-after system available for classified research.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Mar 12, 2025
- Source ID
- N000142512204
Entities
People
- Navid Asadi Zanjani
Organizations
- Office of Naval Research
- United States Navy
- University of Florida