A Survey of Network-on-Chip Security Attacks and Countermeasures

Abstract

With the advances of chip manufacturing technologies, computer architects have been able to integrate an increasing number of processors and other heterogeneous components on the same chip. Network-on-Chip (NoC) is widely employed by multicore System-on-Chip (SoC) architectures to cater to their communication requirements. NoC has received significant attention from both attackers and defenders. The increased usage of NoC and its distributed nature across the chip has made it a focal point of potential security attacks. Due to its prime location in the SoC coupled with connectivity with various components, NoC can be effectively utilized to implement security countermeasures to protect the SoC from potential attacks. There is a wide variety of existing literature on NoC security attacks and countermeasures. In this article, we provide a comprehensive survey of security vulnerabilities in NoC-based SoC architectures and discuss relevant countermeasures.

Security of Electrical, Optical and Wireless On-Chip Interconnects: A Survey

“…Details on optical interconnection technologies and underline basic physics can be found in [15]. [22] provides a extensive survey on network on chip attack and countermeasures which focus only on security of electrical NoCs. A recent survey [68] explores security on wired, wireless as well as 3-D NoCs.…”

Modeling and Performance Analysis of a Fault-Tolerant 3D Photonic Network-on-Chip Based on Hybrid Photonics–Plasmonics

“…Figure 12: Example of a fault-tolerant routing scheme. 8 Computational Intelligence and Neuroscience…”

“…As shown in Figure 15, when the injection rate is less than 0.1, the throughput rates of the normal, GA-Router, GA-Fault1, GA-Fault2, and GA-Fault3 modes are basically the same. During the operation of the simulation model, all kinds of data were recorded according to formula (8). After data processing was completed, the results were plotted in Figure 15.…”

“…To expand the communication capacity, in view of on-chip system defects, a computer network introduced into the on-chip system is studied. Networks on chips have become a research hotspot of computer architecture [5][6][7][8]. In the early days, electrical interconnection was used for communication over a network.…”

LOKI: A Hardware Trojan Affecting Multiple Components of an SoC

“…Network-on-Chip (NoC) facilitates communication between the IPs and has access to all the components of an SoC. Hence, it is more vulnerable to attacks, as a malicious IP can simply eavesdrop NoC packets to extract information without the need of hacking into individual IPs [6]. This work considers that the proposed HT is mounted on the Network Interface (NI) of the malicious IP, which connects it to the NoC IP (refer Figure 3).…”