A Hardware Hiatus

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Kevin Kwiat

Dr. Kevin A. Kwiat, formerly Principal Computer Engineer with the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory in Rome, New York with more than 34 years of federal service, is currently a CAESAR Group partner. He continues his 30+ years as an adjunct professor by teaching in the Department of Computer Science and the Department of Network and Computer Security at the State University of New York Polytechnic Institute. He received his PhD in Computer Engineering from Syracuse University.

Latest posts by Kevin Kwiat (see all)

• A Hardware Hiatus - November 18, 2024
• A Novel Idea - November 6, 2024
• Reflections on Technology Transfer - May 11, 2020

This CAESAR Group member has been on a hiatus. For the past 3 years, I have been on the Air Force Science and Technology Fellowship Program (STFP) under the auspices of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine. My STFP was entitled “Trusting Trust in Technology Transition and Transfer”. The technology focused on: hardware security. The Center for Strategic and International Studies’ June 2022 report, “Semiconductors and National Defense: What Are the Stakes?” declared that, as of 2021, US-based Trusted Foundries only produce ~2% of military devices. Therefore, even with the recent CHIPS (Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors) Act’s intention to reshore device fabrication that is presently placed on foundries that are overseas, reliance on untrusted sources of supply is not going away soon.

The STFP built-up the technology that defies in-situ hardware Trojans from leaking mission-critical data. This is the technology that was initially outlined in the August 3, 2023 blog post “Indiana Integrated Circuits Licenses AFRL inventions”: The STFP build-up included the issuance of three US patents and, with support from the DoD Executive Agent for Printed Circuit Boards and Interconnect at Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC), Crane, IN, creation of a hardware demonstration of the technology in a drone-based image enhancement application.

A more complete summary of the “hardware hiatus” can be found in the paper “Propelling Innovation to Defeat Data-Leakage Hardware Trojans: From Theory to Practice” published in The Proceedings of the 2024 Government Microcircuit Applications and Critical Technology Conference (GOMACTech): https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.20486