The colonial pipe disaster is only the latest example that proves that hacking is around us, and the hackers continue to harass all kinds of targets, from individuals to institutions. Attackers and spies want information and money, and they can quickly adapt to industrial changes, both hardware and software or users who understand technology. But the same as hackers try to exploit any vulnerabilities that they can find to squeeze information or make instant profit, researchers are looking for hardware and software that cannot be released.
The initiative is a computer processor from the University of Michigan called Morpheus which is intended to stop most of the attack of low-level hackers can try this hardware level.
Morpheus cannot be released, but this is a big step in the right direction. According to the University researcher Michigan Todd Austin, it should be very difficult to break down. According to IEEE Spectrum, around 580 Cybersecurity researchers spent 13,000 hours trying to enter Morpheus and fail. It is part of the project from the Advanced Defense Research Program AS. (DARPA), security is integrated through hardware programs and firmware (SSITH).
Austin explained that his team also worked on processors that could handle encrypted data without in advance, features that might be useful for hiding raw data from programmers or other companies when still allowing the computer to process it. It is also a type of technology that might advance the privacy features besides increasing security.
No matter how big Morpheus on attacks thwart attacks that target computer processors, there must be a hacker out there exclaiming “accepted challenges” such as Austin and his team publish their work. Also, it may take a long time until we see a chip similar to morpheus in commercial devices. The full report of IEEE Spectrum is worth reading in full on this link.