Sensors in Hardware Security
A special issue of Sensors (ISSN 1424-8220). This special issue belongs to the section "Electronic Sensors".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 25 May 2025 | Viewed by 762
Special Issue Editors
Interests: VLSI design; low-power design; hardware security; security engineering
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
On-chip sensors provide an important tool for security, reliability, and overall system monitoring and resiliency. As sensors become increasingly pervasive in modern SoCs and safety-critical IoT applications, such as healthcare and industrial automation, the hardware security challenges and opportunities brought about by sensors need to be systematically investigated. Sensors can enable system defenders to detect attacks, such as probing, spoofing, thermal attacks, fault injections using voltage and clock glitching, etc. Modern CPUs and some SoCs already include a variety of on-chip sensors (e.g., voltage, temperature, current, delay, and aging), but these sensors are typically custom IP blocks that are not easily portable across designs. New approaches are thus needed for some aspects of a packaged system that are not easily accessible to on-chip sensors (e.g., micro-bumps, interposer wiring, bonding wires, and analog components). Systematic methods are needed for fusing the data from a large set of widely spread sensors on a package and then providing fast responses at higher levels of software that are needed to thwart attacks, flush data, and move into safe modes, offering overall system resiliency. The testing and calibration of sensors both at manufacturing and run-time are a challenging problem. Additionally, sensors can leak sensitive information to malicious actors through hardware-enabled channels. Adversaries may use existing on-chip sensors or synthesize sensors from other on-chip sensory components to probe system states and eavesdrop on unauthorized hardware and system-level information, sometimes even through the use of high-level APIs. While capturing critical data, sensor hardware itself can also become a source of side-channel leakage through electromagnetic and thermal emanations. Therefore, regulating proper access to on-chip as well as off-chip sensors is also a huge challenge for designers. Furthermore, the unprotected nature of existing sensors could allow the injection of false information into systems by exploiting the hardware characteristics of sensors, necessitating the need to verify the resilience and security of the sensor itself in hardware systems.
This Special Issue solicits high-quality original research on how sensors affect hardware security in various systems. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:
Sensor design and optimization;
Sensor testing and validation;
Networks of sensors;
Sensor signal processing;
Sensor security (confidentiality, integrity, and authenticity);
Sensor updates and calibration;
Sensor-based attacks;
Package-level sensing.
Prof. Dr. Wayne Burleson
Dr. Yan Long
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sensors is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- hardware security
- sensor design
- intrusion detection and prevention
- trustworthy and confidential sensing
Benefits of Publishing in a Special Issue
- Ease of navigation: Grouping papers by topic helps scholars navigate broad scope journals more efficiently.
- Greater discoverability: Special Issues support the reach and impact of scientific research. Articles in Special Issues are more discoverable and cited more frequently.
- Expansion of research network: Special Issues facilitate connections among authors, fostering scientific collaborations.
- External promotion: Articles in Special Issues are often promoted through the journal's social media, increasing their visibility.
- Reprint: MDPI Books provides the opportunity to republish successful Special Issues in book format, both online and in print.
Further information on MDPI's Special Issue policies can be found here.
