Potential Threats and Possible Countermeasures for Photonic Network-on-Chip

Abstract

Design flaws and unseen vulnerabilities in the photonic network-on-chip (PNoC) have made it a focal point of potential security attacks. Previous works well investigate remote attacks launched outside from electrical NoCs. However, it is still a challenge to find possible threats and efficient countermeasures for PNoCs. In PNoCs, for example, micro resonators can be maliciously controlled by a remote attacker to miss expected tuning function, thus leading to data loss and information disclosure. In this article, we first summarize remote denial of service attacks caused by hardware Trojan insertion and timing channel in NoCs. We then show that these two kinds of remote attacks are also effective threat models in PNoCs. We design, for the first time, countermeasures protecting against threat models in the hybrid wavelength and mode division multiplexing PNoC. Finally, we propose the challenging issues of enhancing the safety of the 3D PNoC under new potential threats.