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not protected well-enough – your masterwork can easily leak out from your machine. The
disadvantages with this are that your brilliantly designed solution could get available on the black
market without any difficulties.

Also, if you hold your source code on your machine, a hacker could try to change it through a
carefully planned attack and consequently cause the permanent changes to your solution. On the
other hand, there is a possibility that such a malicious actor could try to delete or even destroy your
software using some malware.

Finally, your algorithm-based software may seem as somehow cost-effective, but is that the case
for real? If we take into consideration how non-difficult it can be to break into someone’s machine
and take whatever you want to, it appears that this solution is still correlated with a risk that is
challenging to be managed.

The pluses and minuses of algorithm-based hardware

The first assumption that we could apply here is – algorithm-based hardware got much higher
investment costs than its software-based solution. This is accurate at a first stage only, but, in long-
terms, such a solution still appears as much secure. Well, does it mean that algorithm-based
hardware is so resistive to hacker’s attacks?

Basically, this is not the fact and even this sort of effort has its good and bad sides. Firstly, we
would agree that it’s much harder to steal algorithm stored on hardware, rather than as software.
You would realize that to get your hardware solution, you must be physically present at a scene
which is much challenging than, say, so easy breaking into someone’s computer from a proper
distance. In addition, in order to extract algorithm from your hardware, you need an appropriate
technology which is somehow difficult to develop.

At the end, as these sorts of algorithm-based hardware are usually stored as some types of external
devices connected to your computer, it’s clear that this solution could be compromised using some
malware that could damage or completely destroy such an effort. So, a 100% of security is not
promised here at all!

Some concluding remarks

As we would see this topic as extremely interesting, we would suggest this to get investigated
deeper which could offer us to deal with much accurate and reliable details and analysis. We
believe such an effort could be so useful for some future applications in this field.

About The Author

Since Milica Djekic graduated at the Department of Control Engineering at
University of Belgrade, Serbia, she’s been an engineer with a passion for
cryptography, cyber security, and wireless systems. Milica is a researcher from
Subotica, Serbia. She also serves as a Reviewer at the Journal of Computer
Sciences and Applications. She writes for Australian and American security
magazines. She is a volunteer with the American corner of Subotica as well as a
lecturer with the local engineering society.

27 Cyber Warnings E-Magazine – September 2015 Edition
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