Security analysts reportedly explored how to extract private encryption keys from Trusted Platform Modules (TPMs) by “measuring electromagnetic signals emanating” from the chips. “This is what cryptographers call differential power analysis, a sophisticated side-channel attack in which spies use sensors or other devices to study the power consumption of a chip while it encrypts and decrypts information to extract the keys from it,” writes Motherboard’s Lorenzo Francheschi-Bicchierai.
Semiconductor market hit $336 billion in 2014
The World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS) recently published its final semiconductor market figures for 2014. According to WSTS analysts, the global semiconductor market showed solid growth of almost 10% up to $336 billion in 2014 – driven primarily by the double-digit growth of memory (18.2%). Meanwhile, all other major product categories achieved positive growth rates, with discrete components pegged at 10.8% and analog hitting 10.6%.
Cybersecurity Intensifies the Tension Between Banks and Retailers
Banks and retailers arene’t competitors in any conventional sense. Yet their industries are often at each other’s throat. They scuffle over the way money flows between them.
Semiconductor Engineering goes 1:1 with Steven Woo
Ernest Worthman of Semiconductor Engineering recently interviewed Steven Woo, a VP and distinguished inventor at Rambus. The two discussed the numerous challenges facing the rapidly evolving Internet of Things (IoT), including security and low power sipping requirements. As Woo points out, security and privacy are critical topics, with a significant amount of concern being expressed over potential vulnerabilities in connected cars, homes and appliances.
Will security concerns slow IoT growth?
Writing for Semiconductor Engineering, Ed Sperling confirms the industry is now in “full pursuit” of the Internet of Things (IoT). “In fact, what started as a trickle has turned into something that more closely resembles Niagara Falls,” Sperling opines. “This is particularly true for the so-called Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), where smart sensors on a factory floor already are saving money and predicting potential problems, such as assembly line shutdowns, well ahead of those events.”
Rethinking The Cloud
Data center architectures have seen very few radical changes since the commercial introduction of the IBM System/360 mainframe in 1964. There have been incremental improvements in speed and throughput over the years, with a move to a client/server model in the 1990s, but from a high level this is still an environment where data is processed and stored centrally and accessed globally.
