Papers

This IDC Technology Spotlight Study, sponsored by Rambus, discusses key areas where manufacturers must address the growing demand for security and privacy built into connected devices. There is a growing belief that security is best done at the hardware level with layered security and implemented in a way that does not create complexity.

The counterfeit market for semiconductors is real, sizable and growing. The Senate Armed Services Committee found over 1,800 cases where counterfeit electronic components were introduced into U.S. military hardware including airplanes, helicopters and missiles. Counterfeit chips pose serious risk to military equipment and the service personnel who depend on that hardware to perform their mission.

When Jann Horn of Google’s Project Zero posted a detailed blog titled “Reading privileged memory with a side-channel,” it set off a firestorm of activity as the post confirmed that secret information inside a computer could be accessed via two different attacks, Meltdown and Spectre. Essentially, both attacks utilize CPU data cache timing to efficiently exploit and leak information from the system. This could lead to – at worst – arbitrary virtual memory read vulnerabilities across local security boundaries in various contexts.