Tokyo university investigates hardware trojans in IoT devices – Technologist

Waseda University Faculty of Science and Engineering in Tokyo is currently looking into IoT security by  investigating the characteristics of hardware Trojans and researching methods to avoid security risks.

Noting the growth in the outsourcing of circuit design and manufacturing coupled expanding internet connectivity,  university researchers observe that cybersecurity threats from hardware trojans are also on the rise. Hardware trojans are circuits that behave maliciously in electronic devices.

To do the study, the researchers have selected Keysight Technologies’ CX3300 Device Current Waveform Analyzer with anomalous waveform analytics (AWA) software to delve deep into hardware trojan detection.

“Keysight’s CX3300 solution is capable of recording high speed waveforms at sampling rates of up to 10 million times per second. In addition, the anomalous waveform analytics enables accurate circuit analysis in a short time, which has significantly accelerated our research,” said Professor Nozomu Togawa from the Faculty of Science and Engineering department at Waseda University.

Keysight’s CX3300A features wide dynamic range and bandwidth, low noise, unique voltage/current measurement sensitivity, and a long-time data logger function that can capture waveforms of up to 100 hours without time lag.

In addition, the AWA function can detect differences in the waveforms of the device and classify them as waveform patterns. This allows quick characterization/verification, as well as debug/troubleshooting and optimization of IoT connected devices.

“We are delighted that Waseda University in Tokyo used the CX3300 Device Current Waveform Analyzer to research and detect IoT security threats,” said Christopher Cain, vice president and general manager of Keysight Technologies Electronic Industrial Products.

He added: “Keysight’s CX3300 offers wide measurement bandwidth, high resolution and low noise, which makes it ideally suited to provide design engineers deep insights into dynamic current and voltage waveforms. The recent addition of very long duration measurement recording and waveform analytics, enable design engineers to capture and explore rare events to realise their high-performance designs.”