High Performance Microchip Supply - Under Secretary of Defense ...

RECOMMENDATIONS ____________________________________________________________
the voluntary exchange of best practices for assuring
trust of standard programmable hardware among
commercial semiconductor developers, through the
creation of courseware and industry information
exchange programs. Developers of high-volume,
standard parts are commercially motivated to
ensure the integrity of their designs, both during the
design and manufacturing process and once they are
in operation. However, these suppliers are not wellinformed
of the means by which adversaries might
attempt to compromise their designs and
mechanisms that could be used to detect and deter
such efforts. It is likely that a substantial
improvement in the trustworthiness of standard
commercial parts could be obtained simply through
increased awareness of threat models and the
exchange of best practices among the commercial
parties.
Research to Enable Firmware Integrity. A targeted
DOD program in the area of firmware integrity
would likely lead to the rapid development,
dissemination, and adoption of improvements to
these trust-related aspects of programmable parts.
Today’s standard parts, especially FPGAs, offer
limited protection against the compromise of their
firmware, i.e., the configuration software that is
loaded into the parts prior to or during execution.
The loading of low-level firmware (e.g., the BIOS)
into CPUs can also have similar vulnerabilities.
However, it is likely that suppliers of commercial
parts would incorporate protective measures if they
were readily available. Thus, DOD investment in
university research in this area could yield
significant improvements in the trustworthiness of
standard parts.
“Design for Trust Evaluation.” In conjunction with
the above, the DOD should initiate a research
program on “design for trust evaluation” along the
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