Baras keynote speaker at ARO Special Workshop on Hardware Assurance

On April 11, 2011, Professor John Baras (ECE/ISR) gave the invited keynote address at the 2nd Army Research Office Special Workshop on Hardware Assurance, held in Washington, D.C. The workshop focused on the new and emerging area of using hardware techniques to enhance communication, computer and network security.

Baras has obtained several innovative results recently in this area, including the use of signal characteristics to authenticate mobile wireless devices, the discovery of unshakable physical characteristics in fingerprint sensors, the use of special-purpose trusted chips for increasing the security of portable computers and wireless devices and the use of hardware-based security towards establishing compositional security schemes.

Baras’ lecture, “Physical Layer Security and Trust Mechanisms: Critical and Indispensable” emphasized that allocating some of the security functions to hardware and the physical layer is not only considerably strengthens the security of many wireless devices and networks, but is rapidly becoming a necessary component in the overall security architecture of complex distributed systems.

The keynote address covered security and trust in broadband wireless; physical layer security, including signal processing, TPM, MTM, TCN, biometrics, PUFs and the integration of combinations; and universally composable security, including security aware network protocol design. Baras also gave example applications in distributed estimation, fusion and trust, and smart grid cybersecurity. He closed with an overview of gaps and challenges.

Published April 14, 2011