Hardware Involved Software Attacks

Computer security vulnerabilities involving hardware are under-represented within the security industry. With a growing number of attackers, malware, and researchers moving beyond pure software attack scenarios and into scenarios incorporating a hardware element, it is important to start laying a foundation on how to understand, characterize, and defend against these types of hybrid attacks. This paper introduces and details a starting taxonomy of security attacks called hardware involved software attacks, in an effort to further security community awareness of hardware security and its role in upholding the security of the PC platform.