Guest Editors Introduction: Security of Beyond CMOS Devices: Issues and Opportunities

The papers in this special issue focus on security concerns and opportunities for emerging post-CMOS nanoscale devices. Security implications for these emerging nanoscale devices is an important and integral topic in system design which has not received adequate attention by the researchers. These devices are poised to make profound impact in the design of secure information processing systems by creating new attack modalities, changing the effectiveness of current attack models and countermeasures, and by enabling new approaches to secure designs that leverage their unique characteristics. In order to provide a foundation for secure electronics and computing in the nanoscale era, we need to develop a deep understanding of the impact of nanoscale device characteristics to higher layers of design abstraction, where threat models and security properties are meaningfully defined.