MIT's Open-Source Secure Hardware Design Course: Attack and Defense, Hands-On

MIT's open-source course, Secure Hardware Design (6.5950/6.5951), uniquely teaches students both how to attack modern CPUs and design resilient architectures. Students gain hands-on experience hacking real processors, learning state-of-the-art hardware attacks and defenses. The course, a culmination of years of work, uses a 'Think-Play-Do' philosophy. Students learn through lectures, interactive CTF-style recitations, and labs involving real hardware attacks (no simulators!). The capstone project challenges students to create a CPU fuzzer to discover bugs in real CPU RTL designs.