Detecting malicious inclusions in secure hardware: Challenges and solutions

Abstract

This paper addresses a new threat to the security of integrated circuits (ICs) used in safety critical, security and military systems. The migration of IC fabrication to low-cost foundries has made ICs vulnerable to malicious alterations, that could, under specific conditions, result in functional changes and/or catastrophic failure of the system in which they are embedded. We refer to such malicious alternations and inclusions as Hardware Trojans. The modification(s) introduced by the Trojan depends on the application, with some designed to disable the system or degrade signal integrity, while others are designed to defeat hardware security and encryption to leak plain text information. This paper explores the wide range of malicious alternations of ICs that are possible and proposes a general framework for their classification. The taxonomy is essential for properly evaluating the effectiveness of methods designed to detect Trojans. The latter portion of the paper explores several Trojan detection strategies and the classes of Trojans each is most likely to detect.