131,630 research outputs found
Limits on Fundamental Limits to Computation
An indispensable part of our lives, computing has also become essential to
industries and governments. Steady improvements in computer hardware have been
supported by periodic doubling of transistor densities in integrated circuits
over the last fifty years. Such Moore scaling now requires increasingly heroic
efforts, stimulating research in alternative hardware and stirring controversy.
To help evaluate emerging technologies and enrich our understanding of
integrated-circuit scaling, we review fundamental limits to computation: in
manufacturing, energy, physical space, design and verification effort, and
algorithms. To outline what is achievable in principle and in practice, we
recall how some limits were circumvented, compare loose and tight limits. We
also point out that engineering difficulties encountered by emerging
technologies may indicate yet-unknown limits.Comment: 15 pages, 4 figures, 1 tabl
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A Framework for teaching Ethics to ICS Students and Practitioners using Open Educational Resources
This project has exploited findings of a pilot study funded by The Open University's (OU) CETL known as COLMSCT (Centre for Open Learning of Maths, Science, Computing and Technology – http://open.ac.uk/colmsct) and carried out under the auspices of OpenLearn (http://www.open.ac.uk/openlearn), the OU's open content initiative. The project has used the experience gained in that study to create a multimedia self-study course introducing ethics in ICS to advanced students and practitioners. The course has been made openly and freely available as an OpenLearn unit that can be studied, re-used and re-purposed by the wider community involved in the area
Development of industrial training assessment system (iTAS) 2.0: a step forward to educator 4.0
For many years, industrial training assessment at Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia (UTHM) is done using a paper-based system, which causes delay in entering marks, and significant cost incurred for printing, by the faculties and postage by the industries. To increase efficiency of the evaluation process, along with promoting green technologies and supporting green campus initiative, an online system named iTAS (Industrial Training Assessment System) 2.0 has been developed to allow industrial training students’ assessments to be executed online by internal (faculties) and external (industries) supervisors. iTAS 2.0 is designed as a user friendly multiplatform web-based system. Faculty and industrial supervisors complete their respective online assessment rubric in iTAS 2.0, which will then automatically calculate the industrial training marks for each student. In developing iTAS 2.0, System Development Life Cycle has been used. Implementation of iTAS 2.0 has indeed resulted in increased efficiency through significant reduction in time and cost by eliminating the amount of printing, physical transfer, and human error in calculation of marks. This effort could also raise UTHM’s UI Green Metric World University Ranking
Applying Lessons from Cyber Attacks on Ukrainian Infrastructures to Secure Gateways onto the Industrial Internet of Things
Previous generations of safety-related industrial control systems were ‘air gapped’. In other words, process control
components including Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) and smart sensor/actuators were disconnected and
isolated from local or wide area networks. This provided a degree of protection; attackers needed physical access to
compromise control systems components. Over time this ‘air gap’ has gradually been eroded. Switches and
gateways have subsequently interfaced industrial protocols, including Profibus and Modbus, so that data can be
drawn from safety-related Operational Technology into enterprise information systems using TCP/IP. Senior
management uses these links to monitor production processes and inform strategic planning. The Industrial Internet
of Things represents another step in this evolution – enabling the coordination of physically distributed resources
from a centralized location. The growing range and sophistication of these interconnections create additional
security concerns for the operation and management of safety-critical systems. This paper uses lessons learned
from recent attacks on Ukrainian critical infrastructures to guide a forensic analysis of an IIoT switch. The intention
is to identify and mitigate vulnerabilities that would enable similar attacks to be replicated across Europe and North
America
A Touch of Evil: High-Assurance Cryptographic Hardware from Untrusted Components
The semiconductor industry is fully globalized and integrated circuits (ICs)
are commonly defined, designed and fabricated in different premises across the
world. This reduces production costs, but also exposes ICs to supply chain
attacks, where insiders introduce malicious circuitry into the final products.
Additionally, despite extensive post-fabrication testing, it is not uncommon
for ICs with subtle fabrication errors to make it into production systems.
While many systems may be able to tolerate a few byzantine components, this is
not the case for cryptographic hardware, storing and computing on confidential
data. For this reason, many error and backdoor detection techniques have been
proposed over the years. So far all attempts have been either quickly
circumvented, or come with unrealistically high manufacturing costs and
complexity.
This paper proposes Myst, a practical high-assurance architecture, that uses
commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware, and provides strong security
guarantees, even in the presence of multiple malicious or faulty components.
The key idea is to combine protective-redundancy with modern threshold
cryptographic techniques to build a system tolerant to hardware trojans and
errors. To evaluate our design, we build a Hardware Security Module that
provides the highest level of assurance possible with COTS components.
Specifically, we employ more than a hundred COTS secure crypto-coprocessors,
verified to FIPS140-2 Level 4 tamper-resistance standards, and use them to
realize high-confidentiality random number generation, key derivation, public
key decryption and signing. Our experiments show a reasonable computational
overhead (less than 1% for both Decryption and Signing) and an exponential
increase in backdoor-tolerance as more ICs are added
Two- and Three-dimensional High Performance, Patterned Overlay Multi-chip Module Technology
A two- and three-dimensional multi-chip module technology was developed in response to the continuum in demand for increased performance in electronic systems, as well as the desire to reduce the size, weight, and power of space systems. Though developed to satisfy the needs of military programs, such as the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization, the technology, referred to as High Density Interconnect, can also be advantageously exploited for a wide variety of commercial applications, ranging from computer workstations to instrumentation and microwave telecommunications. The robustness of the technology, as well as its high performance, make this generality in application possible. More encouraging is the possibility of this technology for achieving low cost through high volume usage
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