Toward a Stronger Defense of Personal Data

Adam Zewe | MIT News Office
February 18, 2022

MIT researchers have developed an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) chip, that can be implemented on an internet of things device to defend against power-based side-channel attacks.

A heart attack patient, recently discharged from the hospital, is using a smartwatch to help monitor his electrocardiogram signals. The smartwatch may seem secure, but the neural network processing that health information is using private data that could still be stolen by a malicious agent through a side-channel attack.

A side-channel attack seeks to gather secret information by indirectly exploiting a system or its hardware. In one type of side-channel attack, a savvy hacker could monitor fluctuations in the device’s power consumption while the neural network is operating to extract protected information that “leaks” out of the device.

Complete article from MIT News.