Zimu is a FICS Research student who is currently working towards a doctoral degree under the tutelage of Dr. Forte, in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UF. He received a B.S. in Automation and Control from Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing, China and an M.E in Electrical Engineering from SUNY at Buffalo, NY. He is interested in problems associated with hardware security and trust, including hardware Trojan detection, counterfeit detection and avoidance, reverse engineering of ICs and systems, and biometrics based human-to-device identification. His current research projects at FICS involve work on anti-reverse engineering techniques and a Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) grant supported project on memory-based counterfeit detection and avoidance.
In his own words, Zimu describes the scope and relevance of his work in each area:
Anti-reverse Engineering: “Reverse engineering of IPs, ICs and PCBs is a major concern today. If a company wants to generate intellectual property (IP) without significant investment, the simplest thing to do is buy an existing product and take it apart to see what is inside it. Tools are available to reverse engineer systems, by either physically and electrically extracting information. One can easily find an agent online to apply fast reverse engineering. In order to protect IP from being stolen, anti-reverse engineering techniques need to be developed. This project focuses on investigating electronic anti-reverse engineering approaches for both chip-level and system-level designs.”
Memory-based Counterfeit Detection and Avoidance: “The globalization of the supply chain makes it unfeasible for any Integrated Circuit (IC) providers to track and properly recycle counterfeit ICs. Since unauthorized vendors might sell counterfeit ICs under the trademark of legal providers, the legal parties can suffer loss of profit and reputation. Other than the legal IC providers, consumers may suffer from reliability issues when counterfeit ICs are used in critical systems. Thus, addressing overproduced, cloned, and tampered counterfeit types becomes a crucial task.”
Zimu was recently recognized for his work in the area of hardware security. His poster, entitled
Heart-to-Heart Devices (H2D): Challenges and Solutions, was awarded a best poster prize at this year’s FICS Research Conference.