The anatomy of hardware reverse engineering
- Understanding of microchips, known as Hardware Reverse Engineering (HRE), is driven by analysts’ problem solving. This work sheds light on these hitherto poorly understood problem-solving processes. We propose a methodology addressing the problem of HRE experts being unavailable for research. We developed a training enabling students to acquire intermediate levels of HRE expertise. Besides one expert, we recruited eight top-performing students from this training for our exploratory study. All participants completed a realistic HRE task involving the removal of a copyright protection mechanism from a hardware circuit. We analyzed 2,445 log entries by applying an iterative open coding and developed a detailed hierarchical problem-solving model. Our exploration yielded insights into problem-solving strategies and revealed that two intermediates solved the task with a comparable solution time to the expert. We discuss that HRE problem solving may be a function of both expertise and cognitive abilities, and outline ideas for novel countermeasures.
| Author: | Carina Yasmin WiesenGND, Steffen BeckerGND, René WalendyGND, Christof PaarGND, Nikol RummelORCiDGND |
|---|---|
| URN: | urn:nbn:de:hbz:294-109981 |
| DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1145/3577198 |
| Parent Title (German): | ACM Transactions on computer-human interaction |
| Subtitle (English): | An exploration of human factors during problem solving |
| Publisher: | Association for Computing Machinery |
| Place of publication: | New York City, New York |
| Document Type: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Date of Publication (online): | 2024/03/01 |
| Date of first Publication: | 2023/09/12 |
| Publishing Institution: | Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Universitätsbibliothek |
| Tag: | Problem solving; cognitive abilities; cognitive obfuscation; expertise; iterative open coding |
| Volume: | 30 |
| Issue: | 4, Artikel 62 |
| First Page: | 62-1 |
| Last Page: | 62-44 |
| Dewey Decimal Classification: | Allgemeines, Informatik, Informationswissenschaft / Informatik |
| open_access (DINI-Set): | open_access |
| faculties: | Fakultät für Informatik |
| Licence (English): |  Creative Commons - CC BY 4.0 - Attribution 4.0 International |
