Security — Overview
Introduction
Security ensures that digital systems remain protected against unauthorized access, tampering, data manipulation, and malicious interference. While safety focuses on random hardware faults, security addresses intentional attacks, protocol abuse, side‑channel exploitation, and manipulation of system behavior.
A secure system must guarantee:
- confidentiality
- integrity
- authenticity
- availability
across all layers — from physical interfaces to protocol logic and embedded software.
Security Architecture Foundations
These pages define the architectural basis of embedded security: trust anchors, lifecycle states, secure boot, provisioning, and key management.
- Lifecycle and Provisioning Security
- Secure Boot and Key Management
- Secure Communication and Key Management
- Hardware Security Modules and PUFs
- Cryptographic Keys, Provisioning, and Device Lifecycle
- Firmware Update and Recovery Mechanisms
These foundations determine how the system authenticates itself, protects its configuration, and resists tampering throughout its lifecycle.
Cryptography & Trust Anchors
Cryptographic mechanisms enforce confidentiality, integrity, authenticity, and non‑repudiation across interfaces, protocols, and firmware.
This domain includes:
- symmetric and asymmetric cryptography
- hash functions
- MACs
- digital signatures
- key derivation
- random number generation
- hardware trust anchors
(This section is descriptive and does not list individual pages.)
Anti‑Tamper & Fault Injection Protection
Modern systems must resist both invasive and non‑invasive attacks. This cluster covers physical manipulation, glitching, environmental anomalies, and countermeasures.
These protections ensure that attackers cannot bypass logic or extract secrets through physical interference.
Security in Digital Blocks
These topics describe how digital subsystems maintain integrity, authenticity, and resilience against protocol abuse, spoofing, replay, and data manipulation.
- Security in State Machines
- Security in CRC
- Security in Protocol Layers
- Security in Data Path & Buffers
Security in I/O and Interfaces
I/O pins and physical interfaces are common attack surfaces. This cluster covers spoofing, tampering, link‑level integrity, and manipulation of physical signals.
Security in Clocking, Reset, and Power
Clock, reset, and power domains are critical vectors for glitch‑based and fault‑injection attacks.
Relationship with Safety
Safety and Security share some mechanisms (CRC, counters, monitoring), but their goals differ:
- Safety protects against random faults.
- Security protects against intentional attacks.
Where they overlap:
- fault injection resembles safety‑related timing or voltage faults
- integrity checks serve both domains
- redundancy and monitoring detect both failures and attacks
- secure boot protects safety configuration
- lifecycle states prevent unauthorized modification of safety mechanisms
Related Pages
- Security in I/O
- Security in Protocol Layers
- Security in CRC
- Security in State Machines
- Security in PHY Interfaces
- Security in Data Path & Buffers
- Security in Reset
- Security in Power Management
- Anti‑Tamper and Fault Injection Protection
- Secure Boot and Key Management
- Hardware Security Modules and PUFs
- Firmware Update and Recovery Mechanisms
- Cryptographic Keys, Provisioning, and Device Lifecycle
- Lifecycle and Provisioning Security
