CLOSED Call for Papers: Special Issue on Hardware Security

IEEE Transactions on Computers (TC) seeks original manuscripts for a special issue on hardware security, scheduled to appear in July 2020.

Recently, the hardware of computing systems has been a major target for cyber attacks. Unlike software vulnerabilities, hardware attacks and vulnerabilities can be difficult to detect, isolate or prevent. Such hardware attacks include adversarial bus snoopers, hardware trojans, and physical access to the system. Additionally, side-channel attacks and covert-channel attacks typically exploit unanticipated information leakage due to hardware implementation or resource sharing. The recent Meltdown and Spectre attacks are prominent examples of vulnerabilities resulting mainly from specific hardware implementations. Moreover, emerging memory technologies, such as non-volatile memories (NVMs), further facilitate hardware attacks due to data remanence. Finally, in cloud systems where limited control of the surrounding environment is an acceptable trade-off, the presence of hardware attacks and vulnerabilities becomes even more plausible. We invite original articles that address issues related to the security of hardware components of computing systems.

Topics of interest to this special issue include, but not limited to:

• Security Analysis of Commercial Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs)
• Performance Optimizations for Secure Hardware Architectures
• New Attack Models, Vulnerabilities, and Countermeasures for Emerging Architectures and Technologies
• Software Support (e.g., compiler passes) for Leveraging Architectural Support for Security
• Architectural Optimizations for Security Primitives, such as Oblivious RAM (ORAM), Homomorphic Encryption (HE), etc.
• Mitigations of Hardware Vulnerabilities, Such as Safe Speculation and Hardware Partitioning
• Secure-by-Design Hardware Architectures, Especially for Emerging Processors (e.g., RISC-V)
• Secure Storage and Memory Systems
• Hardware Support for Detecting Anomalies (e.g., Hardware Trojans)
• Architectural and System Support for Privacy-Preserving Computation

Submitted articles must not have been previously published or currently submitted for journal publication elsewhere. As an author, you are responsible for understanding and adhering to the TC submission guidelines. Please thoroughly read these before submitting your manuscript. Please submit your paper at https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/tc-cs

Please note the following important dates.

• Submission Deadline: CLOSED
• Reviews Completed: March 1, 2020
• Major Revisions Due: April 1, 2020
• Reviews of Revisions Completed: May 1, 2020
• Notification of Final Acceptance: June 1, 2020
• Publication Materials for Final Manuscripts Due: June 15, 2020
• Publication date: July 2020

Please address all other correspondence regarding this special issue to Lead Guest Editor Amro Awad (amro.awad@ucf.edu).

Amro Awad, Ph.D.

University of Central Florida (UCF)

E-mail: amro.awad@ucf.edu

Rujia Wang, Ph.D.

Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT)

E-mail: rwang67@iit.edu

Corresponding Topical Editor (CTE)

Prof. Jun Yang

Electrical and Computer Engineering

University of Pittsburgh

E-mail: juy9@ohio.edu