In a cyberphysical world, we use sensors to detect any error due to attacks, for example

digital microfluidic(DMF) biochip which integrates all necessary functions for biochemical
analysis onto one chip using microfluidic technology.
There can me many potential security threats to these DMF biochips that perform
enzymatic glucose assay on serum. Two potential attacks include modifying the
concentration of glucose sample and malicious modification of calibration curve to deviate
from normal. Such attacks are stealthy as there is no noticeable change in the DMF biochip
synthesis.
There can be Denial-of-Service(DoS) attacks on DMF biochips for certain reasons including
cross-contamination, alternations of sample/assay specifications, electrodes actuations low-
level sequences and to prolong the droplet route.
Hardware trojans modify a system maliciously to disable or destroy the whole system for a
specific input/time. The trojan is able to modify the designed circuit causing unwanted
behaviour, disclosure of secret information, denial-of-service and alteration of system
functionality. These trojans can be inserted at any level – from high-level system design
specification down to transistor level of the IC design flow.
Other types of attacks on cyberphysical world include reverse engineering, piracy attacks,
counterfeiting, Sybil attack, replay attacks, eavesdropping, session hijacking, location
trailing, proximity attack, parameter attack, swap attack and dispense attack.
Attackers can reverse-engineer a biochip to disclose its intellectual property. They can use
reverse-engineering to pirate DMF test protocols. They may recycle used DMF biochip to
make counterfeit biochips, but this is less of a threat than others.
Sybil attack is a type of attack seen in peer-to-peer networks in which a node in the network
operates multiple identities actively at the same time and undermines the authority in
reputation systems. It involves illegal creation of a large number of identities by a malicious
node to provide false information to legitimate nodes about a problem ahead, forcing these
nodes to use an alternative route. Such an attack depends on three factors: whether the
network considers all nodes to be identical, to what degree a network entertains requests
from nodes that cannot be trusted to be legitimate and the minimum cost of manufacturing
the devices.
In replay attacks, a malicious user resends a message that was sent earlier over the channel
to mislead the receiver node, with the goal to disrupt the network. In eavesdropping
attacks, a malicious node gains unauthorized access to sensitive and confidential data not
meant to be viewed by the attacker and this attack can be categorized as a passive attack
with an intent to misuse the data. In session hijacking, the malicious node takes control of
the session by getting the unique session ID for each session. Using location trailing, an
attacker can mark the location of a victim node to eavesdrop or collect private information
about the vehicle.
In proximity attacks, fluidic droplets can be contaminated by modifying the droplet routes to
perform an unspecified merge. In parameter attacks, attacker tampers with mix/incubation
time. In a swap attack, two or more fluidic droplets are swapped. In dispense attack,
malicious droplets are dispensed to alter a bioprotocol implementation
A proposed scheme is to secure layouts of digital microfluidic chips with error control
mechanism. It involves layout encryption using XOR-Encrypt-XOR based extended Tweaked
block chaining mode with Ciphertext-stealing and error control mechanism (LETCE), which
has goals to be best in security, less in complexity, good error propagation and good error
control capability.
Tweak calculation is done using the formula defined by Liskov, Rivest and Wagner:
T₀ = P ⊕ G
where P: Electrode Pitch Size
G: Gap between bottom and top electrodes
T₀: Tweak for 1st layout block
For other Tweak T, LETCE takes previous cyphertext and generated pseudorandom number
as input. Encryption and decryption procedures are followed and we find the following
results: 1) Running time is dependent on layout file size and biochip array size.
2) Encryption running time is generally less than that of decryption.
3) Both running time is very less, thus no hampering bioprotocol time-to-output.
If we are to analyze its performance, we observe the following:
Security: 1) Prevents mix-and-match attack as unique secret tweak.
2) Increases confusion
3) Prevents hardware trojans and reverse engineering attackers.
Complexity: 1) Uses only simple and fast operations as standard simple operators, e.g., add
(XOR) operators.
2) Time complexity O(n)
Error control Capability: Possible due to CRC (Cyclic Redundancy Check) code
Error propagation: A one-bit change affects all remaining ciphertext blocks due to recursive
nature.
Another proposed scheme is smart detection of security issues in DMF biochips using deep
learning. In this case, no standard dataset is available. Hence, UCR Digital Microfluidic Static
Synthesis Simulator (UCR DMFBSSS) will be used. Image processing is done using MATLAB.
Classification is done using Deep Learning. The dataset consists of both all the images
generated per each clock cycle of the respective bioprotocol in the aforementioned
simulator for trojan-free class along with the images produced by that simulator by making
certain modifications.
Securing Actuation Sequence using XOR-based Tweak(SAST) is discussed now, which must
be designed with the following goals:
Security: Best achievable security is essential to avoid IP theft.
Complexity: SAST complexity should at least be as fast as current solutions.
Parallelization: SAST should offer some kind of parallelization.
Error Propagation: SAST should propagate error to the respective ciphertext.
Tweak calculation is similarly using formula defined by Liskov, Rivest and Wagner:
T₁ = Cik₁ ⨂ P₁
Similar encryption and decryption procedures are followed.
If we are to analyze its performance, somewhat similar to the previous scheme, we observe
the following:
Security: 1) Prevents mix-and-match attack as unique secret tweak.
2) Increases confusion
3) Prevents hardware trojans and reverse engineering attackers.
Complexity: 1) Uses only simple and fast operations as standard simple operators, e.g., add
(XOR) operators.
2) Time complexity O(n)
Parallelization: 1) Encryption parallelized on the different actuation blocks.
2) Decryption can be parallelized.
Error propagation: A one-bit change in a primitive element affects all respective ciphertext
blocks.
Finally, coming to conclusions and future work:
1) Researchers have vision to incorporate the complete design automation process on
state-of-the-art microfluidic chips.
2) Future research will focus on detection and protection against malicious attacks on
biochips.
3) Objective is to make microfluidic biochip designs trustworthy before attacks
jeopardize the world of healthcare, biological and biochemical industries.
4) In future work, it is hoped to develop a secure design flow for DMF biochips using
deep learning to achieve better detection and diagnosis of any of the various mentioned
types of attacks on such microfluidic biochips for a better sustainable biochip world.