Machine Learning for Hardware Security: Opportunities and Risks

Recently, machine learning algorithms have been utilized by system defenders and attackers to secure and attack hardware, respectively. In this work, we investigate the impact of machine learning on hardware security. We explore the defense and attack mechanisms for hardware that are based on machine learning. Moreover, we identify suitable machine learning algorithms for each category of hardware security problems. Finally, we highlight some important aspects related to the application of machine learning to hardware security problems and show how the practice of applying machine learning to hardware security problems has changed over the past decade.