Basel Halak

University of Southampton · Department of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS)

The rapid advancement of quantum computing poses a significant threat to many current security algorithms used for secure communication, digital authentication, and information encryption. A sufficiently powerful quantum computer could potentially exploit vulnerabilities in these algorithms, rendering data in transit insecure. This threat is expect...

Supply chain cyberattacks are on the rise as attackers are increasingly exploiting the intricate network of supplier connections between companies. Critical infrastructures too have been successfully targeted using this technique affecting their software and hardware estates, raising serious concerns due to the potential impact on public safety and...

Purpose The purpose of this study is to increase awareness of current supply chain (SC) security-related issues by providing an extensive analysis of existing SC security solutions and their limitations. The security of SCs has received increasing attention from researchers, due to the emerging risks associated with their distributed nature. The in...

The accelerated development of quantum computers poses a direct threat to all current standards of public key encryption, for example, the Shor algorithm exploits the superposition state of the qubits to solve the problem of integer factorization in polynomial time, rendering all systems whose security relies on this hard mathematical problem not s...

The modern IC supply chain encompasses a large number of steps and manufacturers. In many applications it is critically important that chips are of the right quality and are assured to have been obtained from the legitimate supply chain. To this end, it is necessary to be able to uniquely identify systems to aid in supply chain tracking and quality...

The software product is a source of cyber-attacks that target organizations by using their software supply chain as a distribution vector. As the reliance of software projects on open-source or proprietary modules is increasing drastically, SSC is becoming more and more critical and, therefore, has attracted the interest of cyber attackers. While e...

Networks-on-Chips (NoC) based Multi-Processor System-on-Chip (MPSoC) are increasingly employed in industrial and consumer electronics. Outsourcing third-party IPs (3PIPs) and tools in NoC-based MPSoC is a prevalent development way in most fabless companies. However, Hardware Trojan (HT) injected during its design stage can maliciously tamper with t...

The globalisation and outsourcing of the IC supply chain have led to a more complex production cycle. Using threat models to understand the attacks can help engineers build stronger countermeasures and evaluate against different options to create better protection from attacks. Gamification is an alternative to teaching engineers threats using thre...

Public key algorithms are heavily used in many digital applications including key establishment schemes, secure messaging apps, and digital signature schemes in cryptocurrencies. Recent developments in the field of quantum computation have placed these algorithms at risk as they enable the implementation of more effective attacks to derive the secr...

The sheer increase in interconnected devices, reaching 50 B in 2025, makes it easier for adversaries to have direct access to the target system and perform physical attacks. This risk is exacerbated by the proliferation of Internet-of-Battlefield Things (IoBT) and increased reliance on the use of embedded devices in critical infrastructure and indu...

The attack surface on computing devices is becoming very sophisticated, driven by the sheer increase of interconnected devices, reaching 50B in 2025, which makes it easier for adversaries to have direct access and perform well-known physical attacks. The impact of increased security vulnerability of electronic systems is exacerbated for devices tha...

In this chapter, we will discuss linear detection schemes that detect the transmitted symbols in a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communications system by applying a linear filter to the received signal vector. Although linear detectors suffer from a reduced performance compared to the maximum likelihood (ML) detector, their performance can...

Linear detection algorithms provide low-complexity but suboptimal detection performance in terms of the bit error rate (BER) in comparison with the maximum likelihood (ML) detector. As a result of their poor performance, linear detectors are rarely used without augmentation in detecting the transmitted symbols in a multiple-input multiple-output (M...

Machine learning algorithms are used to construct a mathematical model for a system based on training data. Such a model is capable of making highly accurate predictions without being explicitly programmed to do so. These techniques have a great many applications in all areas of the modern digital economy and artificial intelligence. More important...

This study explores the uses of machine learning (ML) in the field of hardware security; in particular, three applications areas are considered, namely, hardware Trojan (HT), IC counterfeits, and physically unclonable functions (PUFs). The former two cases demonstrate how ML algorithms can be employed as a defense mechanism to detect forged or tamp...

The VLSI implementation of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) detection algorithms has attracted considerable interest in the literature in the last few decades. Researchers have focused on implementing MIMO detectors with low power consumption and high throughput with the aim of deployment to mobile and battery-powered devices. Several platform...

The application of QR decomposition to the channel matrix transforms signal detection in a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system into a tree search where the number of levels corresponds with the number of antennas, and the number of branches per node corresponds with the constellation points. The K-best detector utilises a breadth-first tre...

In the above article [1] , in the discussions section it is stated “However, there are still challenges related to the scalability and key distribution problem that need to be addressed before symmetric key solutions can be adopted.” The authors would like to clarify that these challenges can be successfully met in an independently verified, prov...

The significant rise in the cost of manufacturing nanoscale integrated circuits (ICs) has led the majority of IC design companies to outsource the fabrication of their products to other companies, often located in different countries. The multinational nature of the hardware supply chain has led to a host of security threats, including IP piracy, I...

In the last few years, serious games have become popular, with a consensus of the benefits for teaching cyber security awareness and education. However, there is still a lack of pedagogical driven methodologies and tools to support serious games design to ensure they achieve the learning objectives. This paper proposes MOTENS, a pedagogical model,...

In the last few years, serious games have become popular, with a consensus of the benefits for teaching cyber security awareness and education. However, there is still a lack of pedagogical driven methodologies and tools to support serious games design to ensure they achieve the learning objectives. This paper proposes MOTENS, a pedagogical model,...

This work automates logic locking process by developing a software using Python that performs the locking on a gate-level netlist and can be integrated with the existing digital synthesis tools. Analysis of the latest logic locking algorithms has demonstrated that SFLL-HD algorithm is one of most secure and versatile in trading-off levels of protec...

The complexity of today’s integrated circuit (IC) supply chain, organised in several tiers and including many companies located in different countries, makes it challenging to assess the history and integrity of procured ICs. This enables malicious practices like counterfeiting and insertion of back doors, which are extremely dangerous, especially...

The internet of Things technology is expected to generate tremendous economic benefits; this promise is undermined by major security threats. This is mainly due to the ubiquitous nature of this technology, which makes it easy for potential adversities to have access to IoT devices and carry well-established attacks. The development of defence mecha...

The relentless drive for more sophisticated and cheaper electronics products has led to unprecedented level of outsourcing in the hardware supply chain. This has led to the emergence of new forms of security threats such as counterfeiting and Trojan insertion. The attack surface on computing devices has been further complicated by the proliferation...

This chapter proposes a new security mechanism, which consists of a lightweight three-flights mutual authentication protocol and an anti-counterfeit tag design. The proposed solution is based on combining the Rabin public-key encryption scheme with physically unclonable functions (PUF) technology. We systematically analysed the security of the prop...

In 2019 Ascon algorithm was selected in the CAESAR competition as the first option for lightweight applications as an alternative to AES-GCM for authenticated encryption. As with other cipher block algorithms, the security of the Ascon depends, among other factors, on the number of rounds of permutation operations. Cryptanalysis techniques like the...

Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) are considered to be a promising technology that provides a hardware root-of-trust for integrated circuit (IC) applications. PUFs exploit the intrinsic process variations that map a set of challenges to a set of responses. The intrinsic process variations are caused by uncontrollable deviations in the IC manufac...

This chapter discusses the design, implementation and evaluation of a two-flight authentication protocol. The latter combines the use of a lightweight symmetric cipher (RC5) with elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) to reduce the number of required interactions between the prover and the verifier, hence reducing the amount of dissipated energy associa...

The complexity of today’s integrated circuit (IC) supply chain, organised in several tiers and including many companies located in different countries, makes it challenging to assess the history and integrity of procured ICs. This enables malicious practices like counterfeiting and insertion of back doors, which are extremely dangerous, especially...

Physically unclonable functions or PUFs are innovative hardware security primitives which produce unclonable and inherent device-specific identifier of particular hardware. The notion of PUFs is a resemblance to the biometric fingerprint of human beings. The inherent device-specific identifier is produced by exploiting the intrinsic process variati...

This chapter discusses the design, implementation and evaluation of a hardware-based mutual authentication and the key agreement protocol. The latter combines a lightweight symmetric cipher with physically unclonable functions technology to provide an energy-efficient solution that is particularly useful for Internet of Things (IoT) systems. The se...

This book provides comprehensive coverage of state-of-the-art integrated circuit authentication techniques, including technologies, protocols and emerging applications. The authors first discuss emerging solutions for embedding unforgeable identifies into electronics devices, using techniques such as IC fingerprinting, physically unclonable functio...

Embedded systems, especially those that are mission-critical or safety-critical, require a higher level of dependability. Error detection is first step and a vital aspect in fault tolerance because a processor cannot tolerate a problem that it is not aware of. Even if the processor cannot recover from a detected fault, it can still alert the user t...

This book presents a new threat modelling approach that specifically targets the hardware supply chain, covering security risks throughout the lifecycle of an electronic system. The authors present a case study on a new type of security attack, which combines two forms of attack mechanisms from two different stages of the IC supply chain. More spec...

With the increasing demand of designing a reliable processing devices, the issue of CMOS ageing is jeopardising the industry of digital devices. Many studies has been cover this area for modelling the ageing behaviour at the device level or developing ageing sensors for on-line delay detection at the system level. However, we are presenting a metho...

As VLSI circuits are progressing in very Deep Submicron (DSM) regime without decreasing chip area, the importance of global interconnects increases but at the cost of performance and power consumption. This work proposes a low power circuit for driving a global interconnect at voltages close to the noise level. In order to address ultra-low power (...

This paper proposes a portable hardware token for user’s authentication; it is based on the use of keystroke dynamics to verify users biometrically. The proposed approach allows for a multifactor authentication scheme, in which a user cannot be granted access unless they provide a correct password on a hardware token and their biometric signature....

Counterfeited products are costing the global economy hundreds of billions of dollars annually. Radio frequency identification(RFID) technology provides a promising solution for this problem, wherein each product is fitted with a secure tag, which is difficult to forge. However, RFID technology is faced with numerous security threats, for example,...

This book provides comprehensive coverage of the latest research into integrated circuits’ ageing, explaining the causes of this phenomenon, describing its effects on electronic systems, and providing mitigation techniques to build ageing-resilient circuits. • Describes in detail the physical mechanisms of CMOS ageing; • Provides an in-depth discu...

Higher education students are expected to develop critical analysis and creative thinking skills, where plagiarism can damage the development of these skills in addition to damaging the whole education process and experience. Furthermore, plagiarism undermines the trust between the lecturers and students and the reputation of the academic instituti...

Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) technology is envisaged to play an important role in future wireless communications. To this end, novel algorithms and architectures are required to implement high-throughput MIMO communications at low power consumption. In this paper, we present the hardware implementation of a modified K-best algorithm combin...

As CMOS technology scales down, ageing-induced negative-bias temperature instability (NBTI) becomes more pronounced. The impact of NBTI on memory elements of digital circuits is crucial, in particular, in static random-access memory (SRAM) as it is always subject to ageing for whatever value is stored in an SRAM cell. Moreover, the prolonged storag...

In this chapter, we will aim to reverse the aging stress on the functional units of the processor by applying high-level workloads as anti-aging patterns into the stressed component. We present a time-redundant technique to mitigate negative and positive bias temperature instability (NBTI/PBTI) aging effects on the combinational units of a processo...

CMOS wear-out mechanisms, especially bias temperature instability (BTI), cause growing concerns about circuit reliability. For a logic circuit, the BTI effect increases signal delays, eventually leading to timing violations. Due to the increased demand for circuit density, logic synthesis is currently a significant EDA process to design a circuit w...

Aggressive technology shrinking has increased the sensitivity of integrated circuits in terms of devices ageing. As a result, the performance of a CMOS device will degrade significantly over time and, therefore, results in the delay faults. In situ delay fault monitoring schemes have been proposed to ensure the reliability of an IC during its lifet...

This paper proposes a portable hardware token for user authentication, it is based on the use of keystroke dynamics to verify users in a bio-metric manner. The proposed approach allows for a multifactor authentication scheme in which users are not allowed access unless they provide the correct password and their unique bio-metric signature. The pro...

The Internet of Things (IoTs) employs resource-constrained sensor nodes for sensing and processing data that require robust, lightweight cryptographic primitives. The SRAM Physical Unclonable Function (SRAM-PUF) is a potential candidate for secure key generation. An SRAM-PUF is able to generate random and unique cryptographic keys based on start-up...

The complexity of today's supply chain, organised in several tiers and including many companies located in different countries, makes it challenging to assess the history and integrity of procured physical parts, and to make organisations really accountable for their conduct. This enables malicious practices like counterfeiting and insertion of bac...

p>Code reuse techniques can circumvent existing security measures. For example, attacks such as Return Oriented Programming (ROP) use fragments of the existing code base to create an attack. Since this code is already in the system, the Data Execution Prevention methods cannot prevent the execution of this reorganised code. Existing software-based...

The following topics are dealt with: Internet of Things; invasive software; security of data; program testing; reverse engineering; product codes; binary codes; decoding; maximum likelihood decoding; field programmable gate arrays.

p>Distributed arithmetic (DA) brings area and power benefits to digital designs relevant to the Internet-of-Things. Therefore, a new error resilient technique for DA computation is proposed to improve robustness against process, voltage, and temperature variations. The proposed approach mitigates the effect of timing violations by first providing a...

Distributed arithmetic (DA) brings area and power benefits to digital designs relevant to the Internet-of-Things. Therefore, new error resilient techniques for DA computation are urgently required to improve robustness against the process, voltage, and temperature (PVT) variations. This paper proposes a new in-situ timing error prevention technique...

p>CMOS wear-out mechanisms, especially Bias Temperature Instability (BTI), have caused growing concerns about circuit reliability. For cache memories, BTI reduces the static noise margin (SNM), causing unreliable read operations. In practice, error-correction codes (ECCs) are often used to protect data from transient errors in caches, but the limit...

CMOS downscaling poses a growing concern for circuit lifetime reliability. Bias Temperature Instability (BTI) is a major source of transistor aging, causing a threshold voltage increase in CMOS devices and affecting circuit timing. This paper presents an aging mitigation approach that can be incorporated in standard synthesis. We propose a techniqu...

p>An SRAM Physical Unclonable Function (SRAM-PUF) is a potential solution for lightweight secure key generation, and is particularly suitable for resource-constrained security devices. An SRAM-PUF is able to generate random and unique cryptographic keys based on start-up values (SUVs) by exploiting intrinsic manufacturing process variations. For co...

p>Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) have been designed for many security applications such as identification, authentication of devices and key generation, especially for lightweight electronics. Traditional approaches to enhancing security, such as hash functions, may be expensive and resource dependent. However, modelling attacks using machine...

p>Conventional cryptographic solutions to the security are expensive in terms of computing resources (memory and processing capacity) and power consumption. They are not suitable for the Internet of Things devices that have constrained resources. In this regard, physically unclonable functions (PUFs) have become an increasingly popular technology f...

Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) systems are characterised by increased capacity and improved performance compared to the single-input single-output (SISO) systems. One of the main challenge in the design of MIMO systems is the detection of the transmitted signals due to the interference caused by the multiple simultaneously transmitted symbol...

The applications of physically unclonable functions are versatile ranging from secure cryptographic key storage to advance security protocols such as oblivious transfer schemes. This chapter aims to: (1) Explain how PUF technology can be used to securely generate and store cryptographic keys. (2) Discuss the principles of PUF-based entity authentic...

This book discusses the design principles of physically unclonable functions (PUFs) and how these can be employed in hardware-based security applications, in particular, the book provides readers with a comprehensive overview of security threats and existing countermeasures. This book has many features that make it a unique source for students, eng...

Embedded systems suffer from reliability issues such as variations in temperature and voltage, single event effects and component degradation, as well as being exposed to various security attacks such as control hijacking, malware, reverse engineering, eavesdropping and many others. Both reliability problems and security attacks can cause the syste...

p>Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) exploit the intrinsic manufacturing process variations to generate a unique signature for each silicon chip; this technology allows building lightweight cryptographic primitive suitable for resource-constrained devices. However, the vast majority of existing PUF design is susceptible to modeling attacks using...

In computer-based systems, anomalous behaviour can result from physical effects, such as variations in temperature and voltage, single event effects and component degradation, as well as from various security attacks such as control hijacking, malware, reverse engineering, eavesdropping and many others. In this paper, we will present a detection te...

This paper presents a time-redundant technique to mitigate Negative and Positive Bias Temperature Instability (NBTI/PBTI) ageing effects on the functional units of a processor. We have analysed the sources and effects of ageing from the device level to the Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) level, and have found that an application may stress the c...

Traditional utility metering is to be replaced by smart metering. Smart metering enables fine-grained utility consumption measurements. These fine-grained measurements raise privacy concerns due to the lifestyle information which can be inferred from the precise time at which utilities were consumed. This paper outlines and compares two privacy-res...

Aggressive technology scaling has accelerated the susceptibility of CMOS devices to aging effects. Consequently, the speed of a path can degrade significantly over time; this results in delay faults. Dynamic reliability management schemes have been proposed to ensure an IC’s lifetime reliability. Such schemes are typically based on the use of aging...

This study describes the design and evaluation of a secure chip design module for graduate students and junior engineers with electronics and computer engineering. This course has two broad goals, the first is to teach students how design complex systems on chips using industry standard tools and the second is to educate them on emerging hardware s...

Research in hardware security, particularly on Physical Unclonable Functions (PUF) has attracted a lot of attention in recent years. PUFs provide primitives for implementing encryption/decryption and device fingerprinting. Though a wide range of solutions exists for PUF-based CMOS devices, the most investigated solutions today for weak PUF implemen...

This work describes the design and evaluation of a secure chip design module for graduate students and junior engineers with electronics and computer engineering. This course has two broad goals, the first is to teach students how design complex systems on chips using industry standard tools and the second is to educate them on emerging hardware se...