GHOSTGATE Hardware Hacking Competition
GhostGate: HOST 2027 Hardware Hacking Call for Participation
GhostGate is the Hardware Hacking Competition at IEEE HOST 2027. It puts agentic AI on both sides of hardware security. Insertion agents hide hardware trojans and hard-to-detect functional bugs in large, complex, open-source chip designs. Assurance agents prove what is correct, detect what is not, and return machine-checkable evidence. Remediation agents trace failures to root causes and verified fixes. Everyone uses the same designs, sandbox, and budgets. The organizers’ detection system, the Oracle, evaluates every insertion and is the public baseline for participant agents.
Important Dates
Registration opens on November 1, 2026, and closes on December 18, 2026. The challenge will be released on January 8, 2026, and finalists will be announced on March 8, 2027. In-person finals will be held at IEEE HOST 2027.
Registration is required. Sign up through the portal, complete your details, enroll in “GhostGate, HOST 2027”, and select one or more tracks.
Registered participants receive the practice modules on January 8, 2027. It includes a practice design, sandbox image, local validity checker, agent harness with a reference agent, and worked examples for every track.
Contact Information
Hardware Hacking Competition Chairs
Soheil Salehi, University of Arizona – [email protected]
Biswajit Ray, Colorado State University – [email protected]
Competition Mentors
Parsa Mirfasihi, University of Arizona – [email protected]
Muhtasim Alam Chowdhury, University of Arizona – [email protected]
Sujan Ghimire, University of Arizona – [email protected]
Harish Kumar Dharavath, University of Arizona – [email protected]
Industry Sponsors
PilotCrew.AI: https://pilotcrew.ai/
ChipSageLabs.AI: linkedin.com/company/chipsage-labs