Team UF NanoKnights, comprised of three Nelms Institute students, won 1st Place in the HACK@DAC 2024 Competition. The members of the team are PhD students Sudipta Paria, Atri Chatterjee, and Aritra Dasgupta. The team is advised by Dr. Swarup Bhunia, Professor at the University of Florida and Director of the Warren B. Nelms Institute for the Connected World.

HACK@DAC is a security competition focusing on System-on-Chip (SoC) Security. HACK@DAC 2024 consisted of two phases. The live competition phase was held June 23-27, 2024 at the Design Automation Conference (DAC) in San Francisco, CA. Participating teams can be from industry, academia, or a combination. The teams received an SoC design with planted security vulnerabilities. They must identify these vulnerabilities, assess their impact, provide exploits, and propose mitigation. The teams can use any tool or technique and provide a detailed report on their findings.

ABOUT HACKthesilicon:

HackTheSilicon is the premier hardware security contest where computer scientists and industry experts explore security vulnerabilities in system-on-a-chip (SoC) designs. Intel, in collaboration with the Technical University of Darmstadt and Texas AMU, developed an open-source SoC for the competition, replicating real-world scenarios for security engineers. The event has evolved into a first-of-its-kind competition and franchise, drawing massive interest. Join us annually at renowned security and systems venues like USENIX Security and DAC.