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Journal ArticleDOI

Trustworthy Hardware: Identifying and Classifying Hardware Trojans

01 Oct 2010-IEEE Computer (IEEE Computer Society)-Vol. 43, Iss: 10, pp 39-46
TL;DR: A proposed new hardware Trojan taxonomy provides a first step in better understanding existing and potential threats.
Abstract: For reasons of economy, critical systems will inevitably depend on electronics made in untrusted factories. A proposed new hardware Trojan taxonomy provides a first step in better understanding existing and potential threats.
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
15 Jul 2014
TL;DR: The threat of hardware Trojan attacks is analyzed; attack models, types, and scenarios are presented; different forms of protection approaches are discussed; and emerging attack modes, defenses, and future research pathways are described.
Abstract: Security of a computer system has been traditionally related to the security of the software or the information being processed. The underlying hardware used for information processing has been considered trusted. The emergence of hardware Trojan attacks violates this root of trust. These attacks, in the form of malicious modifications of electronic hardware at different stages of its life cycle, pose major security concerns in the electronics industry. An adversary can mount such an attack with an objective to cause operational failure or to leak secret information from inside a chip-e.g., the key in a cryptographic chip, during field operation. Global economic trend that encourages increased reliance on untrusted entities in the hardware design and fabrication process is rapidly enhancing the vulnerability to such attacks. In this paper, we analyze the threat of hardware Trojan attacks; present attack models, types, and scenarios; discuss different forms of protection approaches, both proactive and reactive; and describe emerging attack modes, defenses, and future research pathways.

588 citations


Cites background from "Trustworthy Hardware: Identifying a..."

  • ...The area and power overhead relative to the design in which the Trojan is inserted has to be an undetectable fraction, in order to evade detection by obvious means [29]....

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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: An overview of the most exploited vulnerabilities in existing hardware, software, and network layers is presented and critiques of existing state-of-the-art mitigation techniques as why they do or don't work are described.

523 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
18 Jul 2014
TL;DR: This paper systematizes the current knowledge in this emerging field, including a classification of threat models, state-of-the-art defenses, and evaluation metrics for important hardware-based attacks.
Abstract: The multinational, distributed, and multistep nature of integrated circuit (IC) production supply chain has introduced hardware-based vulnerabilities. Existing literature in hardware security assumes ad hoc threat models, defenses, and metrics for evaluation, making it difficult to analyze and compare alternate solutions. This paper systematizes the current knowledge in this emerging field, including a classification of threat models, state-of-the-art defenses, and evaluation metrics for important hardware-based attacks.

514 citations


Cites background from "Trustworthy Hardware: Identifying a..."

  • ...Microcontrollers are extensively used in embedded systems, and they are equipped with ‘‘fuse bits’’ to prevent unauthorized users from reading or modifying selected sections of its memory....

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  • ...The left column shows the goals of the attack, and the right column shows the location of the attacker within the IC supply chain....

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  • ...An increase in the number and destructive power of hardware-based attacks has highlighted the need for securing the hardware root of trust side by side of power, cost, performance, and reliability optimizations....

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Proceedings ArticleDOI
03 Jun 2012
TL;DR: This work demonstrates that an attacker can decipher the obfuscated nctlist, in a time linear to the number of keys, by sensitizing the key values to the output, and develops techniques to fix this vulnerability and make obfuscation truly exponential in thenumber of inserted keys.
Abstract: Due to globalization of Integrated Circuit (IC) design flow, rogue elements in the supply chain can pirate ICs, overbuild ICs, and insert hardware trojans. EPIC [1] obfuscates the design by randomly inserting additional gates; only a correct key makes the design to produce correct outputs. We demonstrate that an attacker can decipher the obfuscated nctlist, in a time linear to the number of keys, by sensitizing the key values to the output. We then develop techniques to fix this vulnerability and make obfuscation truly exponential in the number of inserted keys.

489 citations


Cites background from "Trustworthy Hardware: Identifying a..."

  • ...EPIC [1] obfuscates the design by randomly inserting additional gates; only a cor­rect key makes the design to produce correct outputs. vVe demonstrate that an attacker can decipher the obfuscated net.list, in a time linear to the number of keys, by sensitizing the key values to the output....

    [...]

Proceedings ArticleDOI
03 May 2016
TL;DR: The proposed logic locking technique, referred to as SARLock, maximizes the required number of distinguishing input patterns to recover the secret key and thwarts the SAT attack by rendering the attack effort exponential in the number of bits in thesecret key, while its overhead grows only linearly.
Abstract: Logic locking is an Intellectual Property (IP) protection technique that thwarts IP piracy, hardware Trojans, reverse engineering, and IC overproduction. Researchers have taken multiple attempts in breaking logic locking techniques and recovering its secret key. A Boolean Satisfiability (SAT) based attack has been recently presented that breaks all the existing combinational logic locking techniques. In this paper, we develop a lightweight countermeasure against this and other attacks that aim at gradually pruning the key search space. Our proposed logic locking technique, referred to as SARLock, maximizes the required number of distinguishing input patterns to recover the secret key. SARLock thwarts the SAT attack by rendering the attack effort exponential in the number of bits in the secret key, while its overhead grows only linearly.

373 citations


Cites background from "Trustworthy Hardware: Identifying a..."

  • ...These malicious agents can pirate the IP, overbuild ICs for illegal sale, tamper the ICs to insert malicious circuitry in the form of Hardware Trojans (HTs), or reverse engineer the netlist from an IC for unlicensed use [2]....

    [...]

References
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A classification of hardware Trojans and a survey of published techniques for Trojan detection are presented.
Abstract: Editor's note:Today's integrated circuits are vulnerable to hardware Trojans, which are malicious alterations to the circuit, either during design or fabrication. This article presents a classification of hardware Trojans and a survey of published techniques for Trojan detection.

1,227 citations

18 Nov 1996
TL;DR: It is concluded that trusting tamper resistance is problematic; smartcards are broken routinely, and even a device that was described by a government signals agency as 'the most secure processor generally available' turns out to be vulnerable.
Abstract: An increasing number of systems from pay-TV to electronic purses, rely on the tamper resistance of smartcards and other security processors. We describe a number of attacks on such systems -- some old, some new and some that are simply little known outside the chip testing community. We conclude that trusting tamper resistance is problematic; smartcards are broken routinely, and even a device that was described by a government signals agency as 'the most secure processor generally available' turns out to be vulnerable. Designers of secure systems should consider the consequences with care.

1,133 citations

Posted Content
TL;DR: The effect of faults on electronic systems has been studied since the 1970s when it was noticed that radioactive particles caused errors in chips as discussed by the authors, and this led to further research on the effect of charged particles on silicon, motivated by the aerospace industry who was becoming concerned about the effects of faults in airborn electronic systems.
Abstract: The effect of faults on electronic systems has been studied since the 1970s when it was noticed that radioactive particles caused errors in chips. This led to further research on the effect of charged particles on silicon, motivated by the aerospace industry who was becoming concerned about the effect of faults in airborn electronic systems. Since then various mechanisms for fault creation and propagation have been discovered and researched. This paper covers the various methods that can be used to induce faults in semiconductors and exploit such errors maliciously. Several examples of attacks stemming from the exploiting of faults are explained. Finally a series of countermeasures to thwart these attacks are described.

766 citations

Proceedings ArticleDOI
09 Jun 2008
TL;DR: A new behavior-oriented category method is proposed to divide trojans into two categories: explicit payload trojan and implicit payloadtrojan, which makes it possible to construct trojan models and then lower the cost of testing.
Abstract: Trusted IC design is a recently emerged topic since fabrication factories are moving worldwide in order to reduce cost. In order to get a low-cost but effective hardware trojan detection method to complement traditional testing methods, a new behavior-oriented category method is proposed to divide trojans into two categories: explicit payload trojan and implicit payload trojan. This categorization method makes it possible to construct trojan models and then lower the cost of testing. Path delays of nominal chips are collected to construct a series of fingerprints, each one representing one aspect of the total characteristics of a genuine design. Chips are validated by comparing their delay parameters to the fingerprints. The comparison of path delays makes small trojan circuits significant from a delay point of view. The experimentpsilas results show that the detection rate on explicit payload trojans is 100%, while this method should be developed further if used to detect implicit payload trojans.

611 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
Sally Adee1
TL;DR: The Trust in Integrated Circuits (TIIC) program as discussed by the authors is a three-year initiative to verify the integrity of the military's integrated circuits, including the F-35.
Abstract: This paper has described the issues on electronic circuits which are made for military equipments.The DoD of U.S. recently launched its most ambitious program yet to verify the integrity of the electronics that will underpin future additions to its arsenal. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Pentagon's R&D wing, and released details about a three-year initiative it calls the Trust in Integrated Circuits program. The findings from the program could give the military and defense contractors who make sensitive microelectronics like the weapons systems for the F-35 a guaranteed method of determining whether their chips have been compromised. The Trust program started its prequalifying rounds by sending to three contractors four identical versions of a chip that contained unspecified malicious circuitry, though U.S. military consumes only 1% of world's integrated circuits.

392 citations