Timothy Trippel - Personal Website

Timothy Trippel

I am a Staff Software Engineer at Google in Platforms Infrastructure Engineering (PIE) working on the OpenTitan project.

My experience lies in the development of Root-of-Trust hardware for the purpose of securing data center and client devices to power the AI revolution. For the past four years I have been part of the core team developing the first ever open source hardware Root-of-Trust/secure element: OpenTitan. I am the most active software contributor on the OpenTitan project, and have led several work streams that resulted in the first successful tapeout and bring-up last year. I have deep experience in embedded systems software development, DICE attestation, secure boot, code-signing/HSMs, secure hardware provisioning, fuzzing, and even IC design (from development and verification to tapeout and bringup). I also have a background in low-level security research, where I have published several top-tier conference papers (e.g, USENIX, Oakland, CHES).

Education

  • Ph.D. 2021

    Computer Science & Engineering

    University of Michigan

  • M.S.E. 2016

    Computer Science & Engineering

    University of Michigan

  • B.S. 2015

    Computer Engineering

    Purdue University

Awards

  • 2020
    R&D100 Award Winner

    Category: IT/Electrical
    Project: Defensive Wire Routing for Unstrusted IC Fabrication
    Press: R&D World, MIT News, Lincoln Laboratory News

  • 2017
    NSF Graduate Research Fellowship
  • 2014
    BoilerMake Top 10 & Twilio Challenge Award

    Project: Smart Microwave

  • 2012
    Donald C. and Marion E. Currier Scholarship
  • 2011
    Intel ISEF 2nd Place

    Category: Cellular and Molecular Biology
    Project: Low-Cost Electroporator
    Minor Planet named after me by MIT Lincoln Laboratory LINEAR
    Link (search “Timtrippel”)

  • 2011
    Indiana's Top Young Scientist

    Project: Low-Cost Electroporator

Press

2024 - First OpenTitan Tapeout
Nuvoton "Nuvoton Develops OpenTitan® based Security Chip as Next Gen Security Solution for Chromebooks"
lowRISC "OpenTitan® Partnership Makes History"
Google Open Source Blog "OpenTitan RTL Freeze"

2020 - Defensive Wire Routing for Unstrusted IC Fabrication
R&D World "Defensive Wire Routing for Untrusted Integrated Circuit Fabrication "
MIT News "Eight Lincoln Laboratory technologies named 2020 R&D 100 Award winners"
MIT Lincoln Laboratory News "Lincoln Laboratory technologies named 2020 R&D 100 Award winners"

2017 - Spoofing MEMS Accelerometers with Acoustics
New York Times "It’s Possible to Hack a Phone With Sound Waves, Researchers Show"
CNBC "Hacking With Sound"
University of Michigan News "Sonic cyber attack shows security holes in ubiquitous sensors"
EE Journal "Cracking a WALNUT: A Novel Physical Attack on Accelerometers"
IEEE Spectrum "Smartphone Accelerometers Can Be Fooled by Sound Waves"
Science Friday "Hacking Via Sound"
Gizmodo "Hackers Can Now Use Sound Waves to Take Control of Your Smartphone"
Fortune "You Can Hack Fitbits and Smart Phones Using Sound, Researchers Say"
CNET "These researchers can hack your phone with sound waves"
Tom's Hardware "'Walnut' Attack Uses Sound To Trick Sensors In Cars, Phones, And Other Devices"
The Register "Boffins Rickroll smartphone by tickling its accelerometer"
Engineering.com "Hacking Sensors with Sound Waves"
Hacker News "WALNUT Attack on MEMS Accelerometers"

News

  • Feb. 2024

    We successfully taped out the first OpenTitan discrete Earlgrey chip.

  • Aug. 2022

    I presented our Fuzzing Hardware Like Software work at USENIX Security 2022.

  • Apr. 2021

    I accepted a job at Google on the OpenTitan team where I will contributing (full-time) to open-source hardware developement!

  • Apr. 2021

    I successfully defended my thesis titled: Developing Trustworthy Hardware with Security-Driven Design & Verification!

  • Apr. 2021

    An preview video of our Bomberman S&P'21 paper was realeased.

  • Feb. 2021

    I released a preprint of our Hardware Fuzzing work that adapts coverage-guided greybox software fuzzing to intelligently generate hardware verification test vectors to improve coverage convergence.

  • Dec. 2020

    Our Bomberman paper on vetting RTL hardware for ticking timebomb Trojans was accepted to appear at S&P'21.

  • Nov. 2020

    We were awarded a U.S. patent (my first!) for our IC Portholes work.

  • Oct. 2020

    Our T-TER work won an R&D 100 Award.

    Check out the preprint and press releases, here and here.

  • Jul. 2020

    My sister, Caroline Trippel, started her job as an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Stanford!

  • Jun. 2020

    My brother-in-law, Greg Darnell, started a new job as a Research Scientist in the Health AI team at Apple!

  • May 2020

    I (virtually) presented our ICAS paper on integrated circuit layout security at S&P'20.

  • May 2020

    I started a virtual internship at Google on the OpenTitan team.

  • Mar. 2020

    An preview video of our ICAS S&P'20 paper was realeased.

  • Dec. 2019

    Our ICAS paper on quantifying the susceptability of integrated circuit layouts to fabrication-time Trojaning attacks was accepted to appear at S&P'20.

  • Jun. 2019

    I released a preprint of our work on defeating the A2 Trojan with T-TER, a defensive integrated circuit routing technique.

  • Jun. 2019

    I released a preprint of our ICAS work that aims to make security a first class concern during circuit layout by quantifying the susceptibility of integrated circuit layouts to fabrication-time attacks.

  • Apr. 2017

    I presented our WALNUT paper on acoustic injection attacks on MEMS accelerometers at (EuroS&P'17) in Paris, France.

  • Mar. 2017

    I received the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship.

  • Oct. 2016

    Our WALNUT paper was accepted to appear at EuroS&P'17.

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