INT31: Ground Zero for Security Research at Intel
INT31 is our world-class security research team that performs cutting-edge offensive security research and analysis, fortifying Intel products against emerging threats.
Dive into our growing collection of technical thought-leadership articles and in-depth research. These resources cover pioneering research that unveils new vulnerabilities, sophisticated attack techniques, and innovative mitigations, as well as breakthroughs in automation, including the use of AI for security.
“Intel's commitment to safeguarding billions of users worldwide is unwavering. INT31 is at the forefront of security research, from groundbreaking discoveries to the latest advancements. We actively collaborate with ecosystem partners to advance the field of security research and extend our research to industry products. We invite you to explore our work, leave your comments, and reach out for a deeper conversation. ”
Dhinesh Manoharan
Vice President, Product Security and General Manager, INT31
Featured Blogs
Securing Hardware and Software for the AI Era with Project Glasswing
Dhinesh Manoharan announces Intel’s participation in Project Glasswing, launched by Anthropic in collaboration with industry leaders. This initiative deploys the Claude Mythos Preview AI model to proactively identify and remediate critical vulnerabilities across legacy technology before adversaries can exploit the same capabilities. Intel plays a unique role in this effort, working at the forefront of silicon and software, and this engagement extends our focus on AI confidentiality and security.
Firmware underpins platform trust, yet even a single firmware defect can potentially compromise the security protection built on top of it.
Posted: April 9, 2026
New post-quantum standards seek to address the risk quantum computing poses to cryptography. Yet an algorithm is only as strong as implementation.
Posted March 26, 2026
Results from a five-month joint review with Intel and Google engineers, focused on Live Migration and TD Partitioning.
Posted: February 10, 2026
Blog Archive
Software-based Thermal Glitching: Toward Undervolting Without Undervolting?
Glitching attacks such as Plundervolt have grabbed headlines for employing undervolting to corrupt computations and break security guarantees, leading to software undervolting interfaces being increasingly locked down. But what if glitching could cause Plundervolt-like effects without relying on any direct or indirect control over voltage? This blog introduces the concept of Software-Based Thermal Glitching (SBTG) and outcomes of early research.
Posted January 20, 2026
Early Exposure, Lasting Impact: Intel Research Program for the Next Generation of Security Leaders
The demand for skilled security professionals continues to outpace the number of experts in the field. To address this challenge, Intel and Princeton University have partnered on a thriving initiative that introduces rising juniors to security research and offers a clear view of research careers in both industry and academia. This is the story of the Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program and how it’s shaping the next generation of security talent.
Posted December 17, 2025
Guided Fuzzing for a CPU-Based Accelerator
Guided fuzzing has become widely used as an evolved testing method in which the target’s responses guide future fuzz inputs. Bringing guided fuzzing to hardware has challenges that require a different approach than traditional software fuzzing. This article introduces one approach for applying guided fuzzing to live hardware targets, using Intel’s Data Streaming Accelerator as an example, with the concepts easily leveraged in a variety of other hardware fuzzing targets.
Posted: December 9, 2025
Driving Security Assurance of Intel TDX: An Offensive Security Research Approach
With the rapid adoption of confidential computing, securing workloads against powerful adversaries—from malicious insiders to compromised hypervisors—has become critical. Intel® Trust Domain Extensions (Intel® TDX) addresses this challenge offering a new model of execution: confidential Virtual Machines, also known as Trust Domains. This blog looks at Intel TDX architecture and security objectives, including how Intel security assurance practices and INT31 security research help strengthen the solution for our customers.
Posted: November 19, 2025
Raising Awareness of Hardware Security Weaknesses: Intel Research and Hack@DAC
Hardware has proven to be a critical yet underrepresented area of product security research. This article highlights two initiatives aimed at addressing the opportunity: expanding the scope of Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE) to include hardware design and collaborating with academic partners to create Hack@DAC – a hardware hacking competition driving improvements in tools and methods using open-source examples/ benchmarks of security vulnerabilities in hardware designs.
Posted: November 6, 2025
Intel.BIN: The BIOS Binary Instrumentation Framework
Introducing Intel.BIN (an acronym for BIOS Instrumentation), developed to enable dynamic instrumentation of legitimate BIOS binary code. This framework delivers key functionality, from identifying simple instructions amidst x86 macroinstructions and detecting buffer overruns, to more complex capabilities, such as locating chained EDK2 function calls without prior knowledge of any function addresses, all to enhance the scalability of firmware security research by enabling automated analysis of large codebases.
Posted: October 28, 2025
Precise Dataflow Tracking in Hardware: Improving Hardware Security Verification with IODyne
Hardware security verification deals with a deceptively simple question: In hardware, where does a value go and which other values does it influence? Precisely tracking this dataflow can help identify potential security vulnerabilities prior to production. IODyne was developed to solve this problem using differential analysis, introducing benefits over the current state-of-the-art X Injection approach.
Posted: October 16, 2025
Hardening Security of Hardware IPs by Verifying Negative Space Formally
Negative testing is a cornerstone of security assurance, checking the behavior of a Design Under Test against unexpected inputs. Software fuzzing is widely used for negative testing of software, but it is not as effective for hardware. This blog covers why Formal Verification (FV) can be used to effectively perform negative testing of hardware, development advantages and key considerations.
Posted: September 9, 2025
Static RTL Analysis for Pre-Silicon (Security) Validation
Static Register Transfer Level (RTL) analysis is a technique for inspecting RTL code without simulation/emulation, making it more efficient than dynamic validation methods that are time and compute-intensive and often fail after extended runtimes due to simple integration issues. Learn how Intel developed a next-generation static RTL analysis tool for pre-silicon validation and the impact it has on pre-silicon validation.
Posted: August 19, 2025
Who’s at Fault? A Look at Post-Quantum Cryptography and Fault Injection Attacks
With growing interest in post-quantum cryptography (PQC), powered by algorithms designed to withstand attacks by projected quantum computing advances, researcher Daniel Dinu examines the importance of secure implementations of PQC, with focus on fault injection attacks and countermeasures.
Posted July 15, 2025
New Accordion Mode Improves Protection of Cloud-Scale Data
NIST has initiated a project named “cryptographic accordion” aimed at solving many of the traditional cipher mode shortcomings, utilizing decades of cryptologic research and practical application of the original standards. This blog discusses issues facing block ciphers and looks at how accordion mode implementation could help meet the challenges.
Posted July 15, 2025
FAQs
Frequently Asked Questions
INT31 has several meanings and origins. Intel has chosen to reserve interrupts 0-31 for use by its processors. INT31 is borrowed from the last Intel-reserved interrupt. Initially, only a few Intel interrupts were in use. Albeit reserved, non-Intel uses had appeared, dating back to IBM PC for CGA graphics. Since those times, Intel has pushed technological boundaries and introduced new processor capabilities, claiming more interrupts, including for security features. With this in mind, we adopted the name INT31 for our security research team, because it represents a sense of urgency and innovative spirit that we use in our day to day work, to ensure that Intel's products remain protected and resilient in a world of ever-evolving threats. Interrupts demand immediate attention, and product security is no different. Also, INT31 resembles Intel in "leetspeak", which many of our team members find really cool.
We wanted to start this blog to highlight the wonderful work we do to secure Intel's products. We intend for this blog to foster collaboration, increase engagement with industrial and academic partners, and give our customers more of an understanding of the lengths we go to secure the products they purchase.
INT31 is comprised of world-class security researchers. We will feature members of the team in a series of posts highlighting our talent.
On average, you will see 1-2 new blog posts a month.
Please check out the Intel Careers portal for all open positions.
Resources
2026 Intel Platform Security Report
This benchmark report provides a data driven view of Intel platform security, designed to give technology decision makers confidence in their security strategy. New this year, the report takes a platform-level view and looks forward by highlighting Intel’s leadership in areas such as confidential AI, post quantum readiness, and hardware enforced software robustness.
Intel Ranked #1 in Product Security Assurance
An independent study from ABI Research assessed top silicon vendors on the innovation and implementation of their security assurance practices.
Microsoft & Intel Security Review: Intel® TDX
Learn more about Microsoft's Confidential Compute strategies built on Intel® Trust Domain Extensions (Intel ® TDX) and the joint security review of Intel TDX 1.5 during development.
Security @ Intel
Product Security Assurance
Learn how investments in people, processes, and tools are helping Intel drive the highest levels of security across our product portfolio. Applying best-known methods to integrate security principles throughout product design, build, and support is why you can be trust that no matter what you get from Intel, it was developed with security in mind.
Intel Labs: Ensuring Trust at Every Level
Maintaining data integrity, privacy, and accuracy is at the heart of Intel Labs security research. From innovations that help protect sensitive workloads to the development of AI methods that will help restore the public’s trust in media, we are at the forefront of security and privacy research and development.