Project Announcement: Ashen and Yanartas

I'm currently in the last days of finishing my PhD (Dr.-Ing.) in Electrical Engineering. To make sure things don't get boring afterwards, I've been busy looking for new opportunities. As a result, there are exciting things ahead for the next year: I have been granted funding by both nlnet and by Prototype Fund for open-source work on an Open Source Hardware Hardware Security Module. As infrastructure for these projects, I created a consulting company, yasec.

Prototype Fund supports Ashen, the OS for open-source HSMs

Starting June 2026, I will be working on Ashen, an open-source software stack that provides the operating system layer for open-source HSMs. The project is funded as part of Prototype Fund's Class 02.

Compared to existing open-source HSM software that work at the application level and that don't consider physical attacks, this stack will provide the underlying operating system services to protect such systems from physical attacks. A key component of this stack will be a portable mechanism to connect hardware tamper sensors to a system. The stack will enable deterministic guarantees of the maximum latency until secrets are destroyed after a tamper alarm was raised.

nlnet supports Yanartas, the OSHW HSM platform

After work on the Ashen software stack is completed, I will continue by creating Yanartas, an Open Source Hardware design for a complete open-source Hardware Security Module that provides protection against advanced physical attacks using a security mesh based on the Inertial HSM technology I developed during my PhD. The design will be customizable to different use cases and payload sizes from microcontrollers to whole servers.

Let's talk!

In case you're interested to talk about hardware security engineering or open-source hardware, feel free to reach out through email or on mastodon. The projects are in an early stage, and I'm looking both for collaborators for these projects, and for opportunities once these projects have been completed. At this time, I only have a small amount of spare capacity outside of these projects, but that will change with time. I'd love to hear about your projects and your needs for specialist work in case you're interested.

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