Security Challenges Toward In-Sensor Computing Systems

In-Sensor Computing (ISC) systems emerge as a promising alternative to save energy on massive data transmission, analog-to-digital conversion, and ineffective processing. While the new paradigm shift of ISC systems gains increasing attention, the highly compacted systems could incur new challenges from a hardware security perspective. This work conducts a literature review to highlight the research trend of this topic and then performs comprehensive analyses on the root of security challenges. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work that compares the security challenges of traditional sensor-involved computing systems and emerging ISC systems. We conduct a comprehensive analysis of ISC's design phases to identify significant vulnerabilities and attack surfaces. Furthermore, new attack scenarios are predicted for board-, chip-, and device-level ISC systems. Three proof-of-concept demos are provided to reveal the consequences of the attacks for three different levels. Our findings emphasize the urgent necessity for sophisticated defense mechanisms and inspire researchers to work on new countermeasure designs against unique hardware security threats in ISC systems.