Hardware Systems Commons^™

Fail-Safe Logic Design Strategies Within Modern Fpga Architectures, Priya A. Bhakta

Electrical and Computer Engineering ETDs

Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) are vulnerable to radiation-induced single event upsets (SEUs) and fault injection attacks, requiring the use of redundancy techniques such as fail-safe computing. Fail-safe computing refers to computing systems that revert to a non-operational safe state when a fault occurs. This work investigates circuit-level techniques and implements fail-safe computing processes as mitigation for SEUs and fault injection attacks on FPGAs. The analysis reveals vulnerabilities that exist in FPGAs over those in application-specific integrated circuits (ASIC); thus, requiring a more elaborate network of redundant circuits and checking logic. The reconfiguration capability of FPGAs adds complexity to fail-safe …

Exploring Smart Thermostat, Don P. Dang

2024 Fall Honors Capstone Projects - Archive

This study examines the security, privacy, and compatibility challenges associated with smart thermostats in smart home systems. Smart thermostats, as part of the growing Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem, face vulnerabilities such as unauthorized access, data breaches, and inconsistent security protocols. Using a mixed-methods approach, this research evaluates encryption techniques, communication protocols (Zigbee, Z-Wave, Wi Fi), and user behaviors that impact system security and efficiency. Key findings indicate that 35% of users are concerned about hacking risks, while 25% express data privacy concerns. Many users lack awareness of security measures, such as firmware updates and password management, which increases vulnerabilities. …

Leveraging P4 Programmable-Hardware Switches For In-Network Pmu Packet Recovery, Evan Michael Bonar

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Undergraduate Honors Theses

Phasor Measurement Unit (PMU) systems are essential for real-time power grid monitor- ing but often face data loss due to network delays, equipment malfunctions, or transmis- sion errors. Traditional centralized recovery solutions introduce significant latency and scalability challenges. This thesis presents a P4-based in-network recovery mechanism that embeds detection and recovery directly into the data plane of P4-enabled programmable switches, significantly reducing recovery time and infrastructure complexity. Using the Aurora 610 switch, the system detects missing packets via sequence number analysis and recovers magnitudes with an efficient register-based algorithm.

Evaluation demonstrates high accuracy and low latency, achieving a mean absolute …

Bonsai Merkle Tree Streams: Bulk Memory Verification Unit For Trusted Program Verification System, Richard J. Rios

Master's Theses

Today, all modern computing systems are undoubtedly vulnerable to numerous types of attacks that could be targeted toward any layer of the system from dedicated hardware to highly abstracted software. Unfortunately, many devices and systems naturally contain inadequately protected components or software modules that un- dermine their security as a whole. Additionally, security is heavily variable system to system, and has a huge dependence on adequate implementation and ongoing support from device and software manufacturers. To address these various security issues in a very general way, TrustGuard, a containment security system utilizing an external device called the Sentry that would …

Transferred-Learning Intrusion Detection System For Internet Of Vehicles, Tan Nguyen

Undergraduate Research Symposium Posters

The growing connectivity of modern vehicles, particularly within the Internet of Vehicles (IoV), has significantly increased the need for robust cybersecurity solutions. Building upon the work of Yang and Shami (2022), who proposed a transfer learning and optimized convolutional neural network (CNN)-based Intrusion Detection System (IDS) for IoV, this research seeks to validate their results and explore potential enhancements. The original IDS demonstrated exceptional performance, with detection rates surpassing 99.25% on benchmark datasets. In this study, we first replicate their experiments using the Car-Hacking dataset to confirm the effectiveness of the proposed model and then evaluate its ability to detect …

Trisc: Low-Cost Design Of Trigonometric Functions With Quasi Stochastic Computing, Mehran Shoushtari Moghadam, M. Hassan Najafi

Faculty Scholarship

Low-cost and hardware-efficient design of trigonometric functions is challenging. Stochastic computing (SC), an emerging computing model processing random bit-streams, offers promising solutions for this problem. The existing implementations, however, often overlook the importance of the data converters necessary to generate the needed bit-streams. While recent advancements in SC bit-stream generators focus on basic arithmetic operations such as multiplication and addition, energy-efficient SC design of non-linear functions demands attention to both the computation circuit and the bit-stream generator. This work introduces TriSC, a novel approach for SC-based design of trigonometric functions enjoying state-of-the-art (SOTA) quasi-random bit-streams. Unlike SOTA SC designs of …

Incorporation Of Gnss Technology For Water-Level Instruments, Armaan S. Oberai, Toma Grundler, Serena B. Lee, Stefan A. Talke

College of Engineering Summer Undergraduate Research Program

Our goal was to take an existing water-level measuring embedded system and upgrade the GNSS module for the purpose of getting the elevation of the device within an error of 1 cm. Main milestones for the project included deploying a successful field test at a known survey point, using software-based post processing to improve the GNSS solution point, and implementing robust hardware and software for the water-level embedded system such that it was easily scalable.

Brushbuds: Toothbrushing Tracking Using Earphone Imus, Qiang Yang, Yang Liu, Jake Stuchbury-Wass, Kayla-Jade Butkow, Dong Ma, Cecilia Mascolo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Inadequate toothbrushing habits are a leading cause of oral health problems such as tooth decay. Many individuals are uncertain if they are brushing effectively or over-focusing on specific areas. While high-end electric toothbrushes can address these concerns, manual toothbrushes remain widely used due to their simplicity and affordability. In this paper, we introduce BrushBuds, an earphone-based toothbrushing monitoring system aimed at tracking brushing areas, which leverages the ubiquitous presence of earphones to enhance manual toothbrushing. BrushBuds utilizes Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs) in earphones to detect subtle head movements incurred by toothbrushing. By capturing distinct motion patterns specific to brushing for …

All You Need Is Unary: End-To-End Bit-Stream Processing In Hyperdimensional Computing, Mehran Shoushtari Moghadam, M. Hassan Najafi

Faculty Scholarship

Hyperdimensional Computing (HDC) is a brain-inspired computing paradigm introduced to achieve energy efficiency with a lightweight and single-pass training model. Hypervectors (HVs) at the heart of the HDC systems play a fundamental role in elevating the accuracy and obtaining the desired performance. Image-based HV encoding requires two types of HVs: Position and Level HVs. State-of-the-art approaches utilize pseudo-random methods for generating these HVs, which might degrade system performance and cause higher power consumption due to poor randomness in HV generation. These conventional methods require iteratively calculating orthogonal Positional HVs for acceptable accuracy. This work proposes a fast, ultra-lightweight, and high-quality …

Investigating Hardware-Based Aes Countermeasures In The Sam4l Microcontroller For Side-Channel Attack Mitigation, Turki Mesbel Alamri

Theses and Dissertations

Side-channel attacks (SCAs) represent a sophisticated method by which attackers exploit indirect pathways, such as power leakage and electromagnetic emissions to glean sensitive information from microprocessors. These attacks analyze variation in power consumption during operations like data encryption to infer protected data, potentially compromising the security of the device. For example, observing the power draw differences when a device encrypts known data can also serve defensive purposes. Attacks often overlook emissions and power patterns, while focusing on avoiding network and host-based detection systems. This oversight presents an opportunity for security professionals to use SCAs to enhance system defenses by monitoring …

Development Of Feature Extraction Models To Improve Image Analysis Applications In Cancer, Yu Shi

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

Cancer poses a significant global health challenge. With an estimated 20 million new cases diagnosed worldwide in 2022 and 9.7 million fatalities attributable to the disease, the economic burden of cancer is immense. It impacts healthcare systems and imposes substantial costs for its care on patients and their families. Despite advancements in early detection, prevention, and treatment that have reduced overall cancer mortality rates, the growing prevalence of cancer, particularly among younger individuals, remains a pressing issue.

Recent advancements in medical imaging technology have progressed significantly with the help of emerging computer vision and artificial intelligence (AI) technology. Despite these …

Exploiting Physical Side-Channel Information For Offensive And Defensive Ends, Sisheng Liang

All Dissertations

Side-channel information consists of side effects of computation that range from microarchitectural to physical phenomena. Empirical studies have demonstrated the practical exploitability of these side effects in real-world systems for malicious attacks and effective defenses. In this dissertation, we discover, analyze, and exploit certain physical side-channel information for end-to-end attacks and defense across three studies.

In the first study, we demonstrate a new DNN model extraction attack named Clairvoyance that exploits certain far-field electromagnetic signals emitted from a GPU to steal DNN models several meters away from the victim machine, even with some physical obstacles in between. Using Clairvoyance, an …

Introduction To Computer Technology: Build Your Own Computer, Michael Deredita, Orit D. Gruber

Open Educational Resources

The students will work on a project to specify, shop, and build a desktop computer (using a budget ~ $1,750), according to their needs and applications. Students will use Newegg (https://www.newegg.com) and/or Microcenter (https://www.microcenter.com/) to browse and select (parts), and will record the specifications of the selected components; including the make/model/item number of each part.

Vysion Software, Isaias Hernandez-Dominguez Jr, Chander Luderman Miller

2024 Symposium

Vision loss presents significant challenges in daily life. Existing solutions for blind and visually impaired individuals are often limited in functionality, expensive, or complex to use. Vysion Software addresses this gap by developing a user-friendly, all-in-one AI companion app that provides features including text summarization, real-time audio descriptions, and AI-enhanced navigation. This project details the development plan, initial functionalities, and future vision for Vysion Software.

Laser 3d Printing Of Diamond-Based Composite Materials For Thermal Management Applications, Nada Kraiem

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

With the trend towards miniaturization of electrical equipment and the constant increase in power density in semiconductor devices, efficient heat management has become a major concern for researchers. Indeed, this technological evolution imposes increasingly strict constraints in terms of thermal dissipation, necessitating innovative solutions to ensure better durability and reliability of components. In this context, the use of composite materials offering high thermal conductivity (TC) and low coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) compared to pure metals has become essential to address overheating issues in electronic components.

The utilization of advanced materials such as diamond (D), with exceptional TC and hardness …

Uhd: Unary Processing For Lightweight And Dynamic Hyperdimensional Computing, Mehran Shoushtari Moghadam, M. Hassan Najafi

Faculty Scholarship

Hyperdimensional computing (HDC) is a novel computational paradigm that operates on long-dimensional vectors known as hypervectors. The hypervectors are constructed as long bit-streams and form the basic building blocks of HDC systems. In HDC, hypervectors are generated from scalar values without considering bit significance. HDC is efficient and robust for various data processing applications, especially computer vision tasks. To construct HDC models for vision applications, the current state-of-the-art practice utilizes two parameters for data encoding: pixel intensity and pixel position. However, the intensity and position information embedded in high-dimensional vectors are generally not generated dynamically in the HDC models. Consequently, …

Comprehensive Network Redundancy Implementation And Cybersecurity Hardening Project: Ensuring Resilience And Defending Against Dhcp Starvation, Stp Man-In-The-Middle, And Brute Force Attacks, Seth Shaheen

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

I have created a network topology that contains three Cisco routers, three Cisco switches, and three endpoints. The network has been built using the software GNS-3. The endpoints on the topology include one VPC, one Kali Linux VM, and one Ubuntu Server VM. The main purpose of this network topology is to show the skills I have learned during my tenure at The University of Akron. This will be done by hardening this network to ensure that the network is impervious to cyber-attacks. The Kali Linux VM will act as the attacker on the network and conduct three attacks: STP …

Side Channel Detection Of Pc Rootkits Using Nonlinear Phase Space, Rebecca Clark

Poster Presentations

Cyberattacks are increasing in size and scope yearly, and the most effective and common means of attack is through malicious software executed on target devices of interest. Malware threats vary widely in terms of behavior and impact and, thus, effective methods of detection are constantly being sought from the academic research community to offset both volume and complexity. Rootkits are malware that represent a highly feared threat because they can change operating system integrity and alter otherwise normally functioning software. Although normal methods of detection that are based on signatures of known malware code are the standard line of defense, …

Building A Wireless Electronic Control Unit For An Electric Vehicle, Hector S. Sosa

2024 Spring Honors Capstone Projects - Archive

Modern vehicles have a variety of features such remote start systems, advance drive assist systems, smart suspension systems, and a feature rich infotainment system. With all this technology in the car, there exists a complex network of computers working together in conjunction to deliver the modern driving experience that many people have today. To be competitive in the market, auto manufacturers are tasked to add additional features to vehicles by adding additional or modifying electronic control units (ECUs). In this study, an ECU will be designed for a mock electric vehicle which contains an already established network of ECU’s. The …

Development Of A Multi-Use Modular Microfluidic Platform Using 3d Printing, Carson Emeigh

Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Microfluidic lab-on-a-chip (LoC) technology has driven numerous innovations due to their ability to perform laboratory-scale experiments on a single chip using microchannels. Although LoC technology has been innovative, it still suffers from limitations related to its fabrication and design flexibility. Typical LoC fabrication, with photolithography, is time consuming, expensive, and inflexible. To overcome the limitations of LoC devices, modular microfluidic platforms have been developed where multiple microfluidic modules, each with a specific function or group of functions, can be combined on a single platform. Modular microfluidics have overcome some of the limitations of LoC devices, but currently, their fabrication is …