A startup out of the CSE department is flexing its muscles. This week, Tortuga Logic's co-founder and CEO, CSE alumnus Jason Oberg (PhD '13) announced immediate availability of the company's toolkit to transform the way hardware designers and system architects test the security of hardware designs.
"The semiconductor industry needs to redirect its attention from only analyzing software vulnerabilities to identifying ways to detect security issues in hardware designs," said Oberg (at right) in a news release. "As more and more devices are designed to be Internet-enabled, the more we need to be concerned about hardware security. Hackers are focusing now on hardware." Tortuga Logic is a pioneer in the so-called design-for-security market. Its new toolkit, called Prospect, is able to uncover hidden bugs and prove the absence of vulnerabilities in hardware designs, thus minimizing security breaches in hardware and systems by automating the process of verifying security properties. Oberg's co-founders in Tortuga Logic include CSE Prof. Ryan Kastner and UC Santa Barbara Prof. Tim Sherwood, as well as Jonathan Valamehr, who is now the company's CFO and chief operating officer. This week's announcement put Tortuga Logic one step closer to graduating from the EvoNexus incubator, where it has been headquartered since late last year. The company should now be able to start adding commercial sales to a business that until now relied primarily on angel investors and NSF Small Business Innovation Research funding. In mid-April, Tortuga Logic was one of 16 startups participating in EvoNexus' Demo Day, where 350 attendees saw the company's demonstration of how their software analyzes the security properties in hardware designs to prevent cyber-security breaches. The company expects growing demand for its products with the advent of the Internet of Things. "Attacks have already been demonstrated on embedded devices such as pace makers, automobiles, baby monitors, and even refrigerators," Oberg told Chip Design magazine in late April. "Most companies are trying to solve this problem purely with software security, but this is a constant cat-and-mouse game we cannot win. As IoT grows, we are seeing more software being pushed down into hardware and our modern chipsets are growing in complexity. This is driving attackers to begin focusing on hardware and, without ensuring our chipsets are built in a secure manner, these attackers will continue to succeed.”
Read the full news release from Tortuga Logic.
Learn more about IoT, Definition, Standards, and Security in Chip Design Magazine.