Embedded Systems Challenge

Congratulations to the 2011 Winners!

Embedded Systems - Malicious Processor Design Challenge

• University of Texas at Dallas – Yier Jin and Mihail Maniatakos
• Grenoble - INP Esisar Team, France – Yves Clauzel, Jeremy Dubeuf, Maurin Augagneu and David Hely
• University of Connecticut – Xuehui Zhang, Andrew Ferraiuolo and Nicholas Tuzzio

Embedded Systems Challenge - Physical Unclonable Functions

• University of Connecticut – Xuehui Zhang, Andrew Ferraiuolo and Nicholas Tuzzio
• Iowa State University – Michael Patterson, Aaron Mills, Sudhanshu Vyas and Christopher Sabotta

Congratulations to the 2011 Finalists!

Embedded Systems - Malicious Processor Design Challenge

• Nanoscape Team - Case Western Reserve University
• Grenoble-INP Esisar Team - Grenoble-INP Esisar Team, France
• Iowa State University
• University of Connecticut / Northwestern University Team
• GLaDOS - Polytechnic Institute of New York University
• RPISEC - Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
• University of California, Irvine
• UCONN CADT Team - University of Connecticut
• TRELA IV - University of Texas at Dallas
• Team Vanderbilt - Vanderbilt University

Finalists can download the design for the Malicious Processor Design Challenge at http://isis.poly.edu/~jv/MP.zip

We are hosting an IRC channel to answer questions.  The server name is isis.poly.edu, port no. is 6697, and the channel name is #escmp.

Embedded Systems - Physical Unclonable Functions (PUF) Design Challenge

• CMU_PUF - Carnegie Mellon University
• Nanoscape Team - Case Western Reserve University
• Grenoble-INP Esisar Team - Grenoble-INP Esisar Team, France
• Iowa State University
• TUD_CASED - Technische Universität Darmstadt
• UCONN CADT Team - University of Connecticut
• Secure, Lightweight and Robust PUF (SLARP) - University of Massachusetts Amherst
• Team Vanderbilt - Vanderbilt University

About the Competition

Call for Participation
Challenge captain: Jeyavijayan Rajendran
Registration deadline: September 10, 2011
Report Submission deadline: September 20, 2011
Finals: November, 11, 2011

(NOTE:This competition is complete. Finalists will compete at CSAW in NYC November 10-11.)

Still looking to compete?  Answer the Call for Papers at the Kasperksy American Cup at NYU-Poly CSAW. 

Trusted computing relies on dedicated and trusted hardware platforms. The security and trustworthiness of hardware platforms is critical to several applications ranging from credit cards to traffic monitoring systems to missile control. Recent attacks on hardware platforms such as tampering, reverse engineering, and malicious circuits insertion highlight the importance of designing secure and trustworthy hardware.

The annual Embedded Systems Challenge (ESC) focuses on the red-team/blue- team approach to assessing the trustworthiness of hardware. Teams are invited to participate in this challenge and attack a target hardware platform. They will discover vulnerabilities in the target platform and exploit them by using their hardware design skills. Such attacks lead to a better understanding of the vulnerabilities in hardware platforms and thereby enable designers to build trustworthy hardware that can thwart such attacks.

The 2011 edition of ESC will start in September 2011 and culminate in a final event on November 11, 2011 at NYU Poly, Brooklyn, New York, USA. Teams can participate in any one or both of the following challenges:

1. Attacking an embedded processor (8051): Insert malicious components into a processor (8051) on an FPGA. This processor will run a set of instructions that perform an encryption. These instructions will be stored in a RAM. Teams can modify the components either in the processor, memory, or the communication lines or all of them. Attacks may not be limited to leaking secret key or performing a denial-of-service attacks. Innovative and practical attacking mechanisms will be greatly appreciated by the judges.

2. Design an efficient Physical Unclonable Functions (PUF): PUFs are low-cost security primitives required to protect intellectual properties in an IC. In this challenge, teams have to design a secure and reliable PUF on the given FPGA. The quality of the PUF will be evaluated by different metrics such as Hamming distance between the responses when a bit in a challenge is flipped, distribution of 1’s and 0’s in the response bits, response uniqueness across different instantiations. In addition, the power, delay, and area occupied by the PUF will be considered.

In order to participate, teams have to register before September 10, 2011. Teams have to submit an initial report on their possible ideas; attacking the processor and/or designing the PUF. Based on the report, finalists will be selected.

Selected finalists will attend the ESC final in New York City (travel+accommodation will be paid for US participants). Cash prizes will be awarded to winners and first-place runners-up. Scholarships will be awarded to all finalists to attend NYU-Poly. Finalists can interact with recruiters from the sponsoring agencies. A special issue of a journal/special session of a conference will be organized (ESC 2010 papers are appearing as a special session of the IEEE ICCD 2011).

For more information, email esc@isis.poly.edu.

Prizes

Cash prizes for winners: 

• 1st place: $1,000
• 2nd place: $750
• 3rd place: $500

$5,000 Master of Science scholarships for all finalists who attend NYU-Poly.

For new undergraduate and graduate students: scholarships can only be used at NYU-Poly and for tuition purposes only, and when combined with other Poly grants and/or scholarships cannot exceed cost of tuition.

For current Poly undergraduates: The CSAW scholarship for continuing Poly undergraduates when combined with other Poly grants and/or scholarships cannot exceed $20,000 tuition costs per year.

Travel Grants

One representative from each finalist team will be given a travel grant up to $500 to present and/or demo their work and to attend the award ceremony.

Disclaimer

All the submitted designs and reports will be open to the public after the competition.