Computers may be made to "blink," offering a way to more tightly secure information from attack.

Human beings blink 15-20 times per minute for a duration between 100 and 400 milliseconds, causing us to spend between 2.5-13.3% of our waking time with our eyes closed. While sections of our brain are momentarily "powered off" during each blink, we are largely unaware of these near continuous and spontaneous interruptions. A similar phenomenon in computers -- "computational blinking" -- is a set of techniques allowing for the seamless disconnection and reconnection of components isolated for safety and/or security.

Prof. Sherwood's proposal focuses on mitigating power analysis attacks to ultimately protect the critical and private information increasingly stored on cell phones and other mobile devices. Without this new type of protection, the device may be subject to attacks that attempt to physically measure aspects of the computing system as it executes to gain knowledge about critical hidden bits.