Hardware Trojan Detection and Isolation Using Current Integration and Localized Current Analysis

Abstract

This paper addresses a new threat to the security of integrated circuits (ICs). The migration of IC fabrication to untrusted foundries has made ICs vulnerable to malicious alterations, that could, under specific conditions, result infunctional changes and/or catastrophic failure of the system in which they are embedded. Such malicious alternations and inclusions are referred to as Hardware Trojans. In this paper, we propose a current integration methodology to observe Trojan activity in the circuit and a localized current analysis approach to isolate the Trojan. Our simulation results considering process variations show that with a very small number of clock cycles the method can detect hardware Trojans as small as few gates without fully activating them. However, for very small Trojan circuits with less than few gates, process variations could negatively impact the detection and isolation process.