CAREER: SAIF: Security Assurance through AI and Formal Approaches for System-on-Chips

Integrated circuits are critical components in many vital electronic devices and systems, including those used in financial services, military and defense applications, healthcare systems, and business operations. Such circuits are subject to an ever-growing number of security vulnerabilities and attacks due to their complex functionality, increased interactions among numerous functional blocks, and connectivity to the internet. Any failure of security and trust requirements of such circuits can lead to sensitive information leakage, privacy violations, critical infrastructure damage, and potentially endanger of human life. Examining the security of such complex circuits is therefore critical, but at the same time challenging, in that it requires innovative solutions to tackle complexity, a large number of security vulnerabilities, and various methods of attack. This project develops an innovative artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted security verification framework called SAIF to address the following objectives: (i) provide high verification coverage, (ii) lower security verification time by orders of magnitude by taking humans out of the process, (iii) provide scalability of circuit complexity, and (iv) offer adaptability to new attack surfaces. SAIF provides the design and verification engineers with properties and tools to check for security vulnerabilities before fabrication. SAIF uses AI to develop a comprehensive database of security properties and rules, support functional security property generation, assist security rule generation and verification, and facilitate AI- test generation for security verification and validation. This project will integrate research and educational activities by developing a modified curriculum/syllabus for high schoolers, workforce development, minority recruiting, training/workshops for K-12 and undergraduate students, and disseminating research results through publications, seminars, tutorials, and panels. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.