January 18, 2023
NewAE Technology is a Nova Scotia-based company revolutionizing the hardware security market—and it all began nearly a decade ago from a university research project.
In 2013, Colin O’Flynn was studying to obtain his Ph.D in embedded hardware security, and he began working on a project: an open-source platform that makes researching and testing embedded side channel attacks accessible, replicable and convenient. Its name? ChipWhisperer.
O’Flynn turned that project into a full-fledged business: NewAE Technology. Fast forward to today, the company just released its latest iteration of the ChipWhisperer—the ChipWhisperer-Husky—after raising more than a quarter million dollars on Crowd Supply.
“We’re happy to see the level of support it received again, as these are fairly niche products so it can be hard to gauge how they will do,” said Operations Manager Melissa Armbruster.
“We’re excited to (finally!) get the product out there, as ChipWhisperer-Husky was originally planned for release before the COVID-19 pandemic. Supply chain issues and global parts shortages throughout the past two years caused production delays for many of our products.”
NewAE Technology’s products are made, assembled and tested in Nova Scotia and are sold globally to those working in academics, classroom settings, research labs and engineering.
Armbruster says that with the growing world of smart devices and embedded systems, embedded security is becoming more important than ever. That’s why education is a major part of NewAE Technology’s mission.
“A defining feature of The ChipWhisperer Project is that the hardware and software are rooted in education,” she says. “The hardware is designed in a way to teach users about embedded security, how to access embedded security risks, conduct attacks (as hackers would), and implement countermeasures – first using the provided targets, and then modifying the open-source software to test their own targets for vulnerabilities.”
NewAE Technology even offers courses and free tutorials that teach about embedded security, highlighting the importance of understanding the ease of attacks, and the lack of advanced technology they require.
“Until recent years, embedded security research had a high barrier to entry due to (false) assumptions that attacks required complex, expensive lab equipment. The ChipWhisperer was created to promote accessibility and show that side-channel power analysis and fault injection attacks pose real threats and can be conducted using $50-$300 hardware,” she said.
“We’ve also seen some interesting uses for our products lately, too. A well-known hardware hacker named Joe Grand helped someone who had locked $2-million dollars in cryptocurrency on a hardware wallet, and made a YouTube video of how he did it. He used several of our products for this.”
In June, NewAE Technology, along with the ChipWhisperer IP, found a new home under lowRISC. As a part of this growth, NewAE Technology is actively recruiting to take on exciting new projects.
“We got some surprise news about some “indefinitely delayed” parts becoming available, so we are excited to be able to do some production earlier than planned!” she said.
“As our world becomes more and more connected, these hardware security products are becoming critical to ensuring embedded systems aren’t the interconnected world’s Achilles’ heel.”
If you want to learn more about the world of embedded hardware security, check out O’Flynn’s new co-authored book, The Hardware Hacking Handbook. And if you’re interested in joining the NewAE Technology team to help develop the next generation of embedded security hardware, head to their website to learn more!