Security Aspects in Networks-on-Chips: Overview and Proposals for Secure Implementations

Abstract

Security has gained increasing relevance in the development of embedded devices. Towards the aim of a secure system at each level of the design, in this paper we address security aspects related to networks-on-chips (NoCs) architectures. After presenting the attacks most likely to address NoCs, we survey existing academic and industrial secure architectures relevant to our case, focusing in particular on their communication infrastructure. We outline and propose possible solutions to contrast some of the attacks described and suggest the use of the NoC as a mean to monitor and detect unexpected system behaviors.