Hardware Trojan horse detection using gate-level characterization

Abstract

Hardware Trojan horses (HTHs) are the malicious altering of hardware specification or implementation in such a way that its functionality is altered under a set of conditions defined by the attacker. There are numerous HTHs sources including untrusted foundries, synthesis tools and libraries, testing and verification tools, and configuration scripts. HTH attacks can greatly comprise security and privacy of hardware users either directly or through interaction with pertinent systems and application software or with data. However, while there has been a huge research and development effort for detecting software Trojan horses, surprisingly, HTHs are rarely addressed. HTH detection is a particularly difficult task in modern and pending deep submicron technologies due to intrinsic manufacturing variability.