European Master Network on Embedded System Security

The European Master Network on Embedded System Security (EMNESS) project was an initiative of a group of European universities (University of Freiburg, University of Stuttgart, Polytechnic Univers...

Relying on the already existing courses, laboratories, and equipment, new course content and learning methods were developed through collaboration. The principle was to foster innovation, creativity, knowledge exchange, and multidisciplinary teaching and learning. This initiative addressed the knowledge gaps for students aiming to pursue professional careers in Reliability and Hardware Security. These gaps included, for instance, the skills of hardware security and reliability experts who define and evaluate secure and reliable products, as well as the skills of hardware and software designers responsible for designing them. The objectives of this project were: i) the collective work of professors from partner universities, which led to the enhancement of existing courses and the integration of some course/module/program content; ii) the sharing and co-development of laboratories, providing students with opportunities to participate in more specialized experiments; iii) the upskilling of students by training them with realistic systems. Achieving these objectives brought forward innovative ideas and led to projects that further attracted the interest of industry.

Three work packages, focusing on three different scientific axes, were implemented and included various activities. All partners were involved in all the work packages. The first work package (WP1) focused on the development of new educational materials for both lectures and laboratories, addressing software and system-level security and safety solutions against hardware vulnerabilities. This work package targets master programs on “Embedded Systems Engineering or Software Engineering”;i.e., hardware and software engineers responsible for designing and developing embedded products and related softwares. The second work package (WP2) deals with the setup and analysis of realistic test cases for safe and secure embedded systems. Finally, the third work package (WP3) focused on the safety and security of hardware primitives operating in harsh and critical environments, as well as against physical attacks (hardware security).This work package targets master programs on “Hardware Security and Reliability Engineering”; i.e., engineers specialized in assessing and ensuring secure, reliable electronic products and hardware security primitives.