Hardware security, vulnerabilities, and attacks: a comprehensive taxonomy

Information Systems, increasingly present in a world that goes towards complete digitalization, can be seen as complex systems at the base of which is the hardware. When dealing with the security of these systems to stop possible intrusions and malicious uses, the analysis must necessarily include the possible vulnerabilities that can be found at the hardware level, since their exploitation can make all defenses implemented at web or software level ineffective. In this paper, we propose a meaningful and comprehensive taxonomy for the vulnerabilities affecting the hardware and the attacks that exploit them to compromise the system, also giving a definition of Hardware Security, in order to clarify a concept often confused with other domains, even in the literature.