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Title: Targeted modification of hardware trojans

Journal Article · · Journal of Hardware and Systems Security (Online)
 [1];  [2];  [1]
  1. Sandia National Lab. (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States)
  2. Sandia National Lab. (SNL-CA), Livermore, CA (United States)

The use of untrusted design tools, components, and designers, coupled with untrusted device fabrication, introduces the possibility of malicious modifications being made to integrated circuits (ICs) during their design and fabrication. These modifications are known as hardware trojans. The widespread use of commercially purchased 3rd party intellectual property (3PIP) and commercial design tools extends even into trusted design flows. Unfortunately, due to the theoretical result that there is no program that can decide whether any other program will eventually halt, we know that the properties of a program, or circuit, cannot be known in advance of running it. While we can design a circuit to meet some functional specification and generate a simulation or test suite to obtain at least probabilistic confidence that the circuit implements the intended functionality, we cannot test a circuit for unintended functionality due to the combinatorially large state space. To address these concerns, we have developed a design-time method for automatically and systematically modifying portions of a design that exhibit characteristics of hardware trojans. After each modification, the functionality of the design is verified against a comprehensive simulation suite to ensure that the intended circuit functionality has not been changed. Finally, this approach can be applied to any digital circuit and does not rely on secret keys or obfuscation.

Research Organization:
Sandia National Lab. (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States); Sandia National Lab. (SNL-CA), Livermore, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC04-94AL85000
OSTI ID:
1502452
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1502454
Report Number(s):
SAND-2018-12772J; SAND-2018-9731J; 669721
Journal Information:
Journal of Hardware and Systems Security (Online), Vol. 3, Issue 2; ISSN 2509-3436
Publisher:
Springer NatureCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

References (20)

Hardware Trojan: Threats and emerging solutions conference November 2009
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Using computational game theory to guide verification and security in hardware designs conference May 2017
Overcoming an Untrusted Computing Base: Detecting and Removing Malicious Hardware Automatically conference May 2010
Scalable Test Generation for Trojan Detection Using Side Channel Analysis journal November 2018
Guided test generation for isolation and detection of embedded trojans in ics conference January 2008
Common-mode failures in redundant VLSI systems: a survey journal January 2000
Functional polymorphism for intellectual property protection conference May 2016
FANCI: identification of stealthy malicious logic using boolean functional analysis conference January 2013
A Sensitivity Analysis of Power Signal Methods for Detecting Hardware Trojans Under Real Process and Environmental Conditions journal January 2010
Silencing Hardware Backdoors conference May 2011
Dynamic Polymorphic Reconfiguration for anti-tamper circuits conference August 2009
Golden-Free Hardware Trojan Detection with High Sensitivity Under Process Noise journal December 2016
On design vulnerability analysis and trust benchmarks development conference October 2013
Dependable computing: From concepts to design diversity journal January 1986
A Survey of Hardware Trojan Taxonomy and Detection journal January 2010
MOLES: malicious off-chip leakage enabled by side-channels conference January 2009
Towards trojan-free trusted ICs: problem analysis and detection scheme conference January 2008
On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem journal January 1937

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