A new research project entitled “design methods and hardware/software co-verification for the unique identifiability of electronic components” or VE-VIDES for short, has been launched in Germany. Led by Infineon Technologies, the project brings together twelve partners from the research sector, academia, and the electronics industry who will collaborate on the development of a holistic security concept for the Internet of Things.
The goal of VE-VIDES is to systematically identify potential security gaps during the design phase and to utilise automatically generated, trustworthy mechanisms to protect electronic systems against attack. The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research is supporting the project as part of its funding measure called “Trustworthy Electronics” or ZEUS.
“We rely on electronic systems in almost every aspect of our lives and our work. These systems make our lives easier, safer and greener. We need trustworthy electronics if we want to really be able to rely on them,” said Infineon’s Djones Lettnin, head of the alliance project. “In VE-VIDES our focus is on securing the trustworthiness of system hardware while taking the direct interfaces to trustworthy firmware and software components into account.”
It is necessary to plan for and secure the trustworthiness of a system and its subcomponents during design at the architecture level. VE-VIDES is therefore researching trustworthy development and verification processes which give electronic systems verifiable and, whenever possible, quantifiable protection against attacks. The design methods, tool chains and test suites emerging from this collaborative project will provide a solid foundation to future development tools for trustworthy electronics and will thus contribute to the technical and technological sovereignty of Germany and Europe.
Attack scenarios for electronic systems include:
- Attacks via the internet (hacking) in which intentionally integrated backdoors and trojans or accidentally overlooked vulnerabilities are exploited in order to change the target system‘s functionality or steal data stored within the system
- Electronic, optical or physical attacks on integrated circuits in order to steal intellectual property or illegally read out or modify data
Participating Partners
- CARIAD SE
- Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS, Division Engineering of Adaptive Systems EAS
- Infineon Technologies AG
- IMMS Institut für Mikroelektronik- und Mechatronik-Systeme gemeinnützige GmbH (IMMS GmbH)
- OFFIS e.V. – Institute for Information Technology
- OneSpin, a Siemens company
- Robert Bosch GmbH
- Siemens AG
- Synopsys GmbH
- Chemnitz University of Technology
- Ulm University
- X-FAB Global Services GmbH
Project Management
- edacentrum GmbH
www.edacentrum.de/ve-vides for more information.
