University of Idaho team wins chip security challenge

University of Idaho electrical engineering senior Lloyd Alcorn and Assistant Professor Zain Ul Abideen took first place in the GenAI-Guided Hardware IP Redaction and Red-Teaming Challenge at the 63rd Design Automation Conference (DAC). The competition brought together participants from academia and industry to test methods for protecting semiconductor intellectual property.

The team created a hardware security system embedded within a microchip to hide critical information about its functionality and design without sacrificing computing power or performance. Alcorn adapted and tested the protection workflow, checked that protected designs still operated correctly, and measured effects on chip power and timing. He also conducted an AI-assisted adversarial evaluation to assess what sensitive information an attacker could still learn.

The remote competition ran from June to July 2026, with awards presented at the conference. Blue teams developed ways to conceal design information, while red teams used generative AI to attempt to reconstruct it. These protections address risks arising as chips move through manufacturing, packaging, testing and distribution facilities, where sensitive design information can be exposed or stolen.