Quantum Dice and SCI Semiconductor have announced a partnership where the two companies will collaborate on future development. The two companies are to create joint solutions targeting advanced security systems. They are targeting smart energy and critical infrastructure, aerospace and defense, telecommunications, automotive, industry 4.0, and medical domains.
Dr Ramy Shelbaya, CEO and Co-Founder of Quantum Dice, said: “The incredible exponential advancement of semiconductor technology is constantly making our lives more convenient, but just as with any technological revolution, it has its hidden risks.
“The security of the smart solutions that are being deployed everywhere from our energy infrastructure to our defense systems is rapidly becoming an essential part of the conversation around the future of the digital era. We are really excited to be working with the experts at SCI Semiconductor to take this conversation to the next level and bring quantum-backed memory-safe security solutions to the market”.
Integrating quantum security into silicon
At the centre of this announcement is Quantum Dice’s Quantum Random Number Generator (QRNG) technology and its DISC protocol. DISC ensures that all numbers generated are truly random, which is critical for any cryptographic process. The risk of repeated numbers increases the likelihood that an encryption can be broken, rendering it worthless.
According to Quantum Dice, “DISC provides continuous quantum assurance and takes the protection against hardware attacks and silent failure to a new level. The live entropy measurement enabled by the DISC protocol provides a unique ability for users to verify and quantify the security of their encryption keys in real-time.”
Quantum Dice and SCI Semiconductor plan to integrate QRNG and DICE technology with SCI’s CHERI (Capability Hardware Enhanced RISC Instructions) technology. The goal is to create “secure, memory-safe semiconductor solutions tailored for long-term, robust protection in industries with the highest security demands.”
What is CHERI?
CHERI is a joint project between SRI International and the University of Cambridge. It has received financial support from the UK and US governments through programmes such as the UK Digital Security by Design (DSbD) and the US DARPA CRASH (Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency Clean-Slate Design of Resilient, Adaptive, Secure Hosts).
What CHERI provides is fine-grained memory protection and scalable software compartmentalisation. From a security perspective, this allows it to address software defects and memory vulnerabilities. For example, buffer overflows are a common attack that CHERI technology addresses. It also detects when software tries to access areas outside of a buffer, a condition known as a silent bug.
The CHERI Alliance
In June, the CHERI Alliance was created to help drive the development and adoption of this technology. The founding members are Capabilities Limited, Codasip, the FreeBSD Foundation, lowRISC, SCI Semiconductor, and the University of Cambridge. This announcement does not indicate whether Quantum Dice is now a member of that group.
Quantum Dice is not the only vendor contributing to the CHERI Alliance. Today, Codasip donated its newly developed Software Development Kit (SDK). Its announcement says it will help secure Linux.
It will be interesting to see how the CHERI Alliance develops over the next few months. Will chip manufacturers join to help improve security?
The US and UK governments believe the technology sector must do more to reduce cyber-attacks. In February, the White House issued a report called Back to the Building Blocks. In that report, it calls for memory-safe programming languages. This is where the CHERI Alliance believes it offers a solution and why they want to see CHERI used inside new generations of silicon.
However, ARM, a long-term supporter of CHERI, decided not to join the CHERI Alliance. It believes that the market for CHERI-enabled products is too small. What may change that is the view of other technology companies. Many are producing their own silicon to address the need for AI and other solutions. If the CHERI Alliance can capture one of those, it would spark renewed interest in the technology.
Enterprise Times: What does this mean?
This is an interesting announcement by Quantum Dice and SCI Semiconductor. Adding QRNG technology delivers an increased level of security to SCI’s CHERI implementation.
It will be interesting to see what products the two companies develop. We may know more by the end of this week. Both companies are at the IoT Security Foundation (IoTSF) Annual Conference in London tomorrow, where they are announcing this partnership. Will they announce products? One would hope so.
Beyond that, it will be interesting to see what the long-term plans are for CHERI and the impact that adding QRNG has on it.
