Hardware trojans and smart manufacturing – a hardware security perspective (original) (raw)

A Survey on Integrated Circuit Trojans

Computer Engineering and Intelligent Systems, 2021

Traditionally, computer security has been associated with the software security, or the information-data security. Surprisingly, the hardware on which the software executes or the information stored-processed-transmitted has been assumed to be a trusted base of security. The main building blocks of any electronic device are Integrated circuits (ICs) which form the fabric of a computer system. Lately, the use of ICs has expanded from handheld calculators and personal computers (PCs) to smartphones, servers, and Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices. However, this significant growth in the IC market created intense competition among IC vendors, leading to new trends in IC manufacturing. System-on-chip (SoC) design based on intellectual property (IP), a globally spread supply chain of production and distribution of ICs are the foremost of these trends. The emerging trends have resulted in many security and trust weaknesses and vulnerabilities, in computer systems. This includes Hardware Trojans attacks, side-channel attacks, Reverse-engineering, IP piracy, IC counterfeiting, micro probing, physical tampering, and acquisition of private or valuable assets by debugging and testing. IC security and trust vulnerabilities may cause loss of private information, modified/altered functions, which may cause a great economical hazard and big damage to society. Thus, it is crucial to examine the security and trust threats existing in the IC lifecycle and build defense mechanisms against IC Trojan threats. In this article, we examine the IC supply chain and define the possible IC Trojan threats for the parties involved. Then we survey the latest progress of research in the area of countermeasures against the IC Trojan attacks and discuss the challenges and expectations in this area.

Hardware Trojan Attacks: Threat Analysis and Countermeasures

Proceedings of the IEEE, 2014

| 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 chipVe.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.

Design, Implementation and Detection of Hardware Trojans in Sequential systems

International Journal of Recent Technology and Engineering (IJRTE), 2019

For decades, digital systems have been designed based on assumptions that the underlying hardware, though not perfectly reliable, is free of malicious elements. The demand for IC’s is greatly increasing due to tremendous technological development. Without appropriate resources the companies are hard pressed to produce trusted IC’s. This is driving the companies into the ‘fabless’ trend predominant in semi-conductor industry, where the companies are depending on cheaper foundries for the IC fabrication instead of depending on their own resources. This growth brings with it a big rise in threat level in terms of Hardware Trojans that hits the manufacturing companies which make use of Integrated Circuits. This transcends many industries, including strategic organizations and telecommunication companies, mobile phones and computers, embedded systems used in domestic applications and health care equipment. These adversarial inclusions are generally triggered to do malicious modifications...

Hardware Trojan: Threats and emerging solutions

High Level Design …, 2009

Malicious modification of hardware during design or fabrication has emerged as a major security concern. Such tampering (also referred to as Hardware Trojan) causes an integrated circuit (IC) to have altered functional behavior, potentially with disastrous consequences in safety-critical applications. Conventional design-time verification and post-manufacturing testing cannot be readily extended to detect hardware Trojans due to their stealthy nature, inordinately large number of possible instances and large variety in structure and operating mode. In this paper, we analyze the threat posed by hardware Trojans and the methods of deterring them. We present a Trojan taxonomy, models of Trojan operations and a review of the state-of-the-art Trojan prevention and detection techniques. Next, we discuss the major challenges associated with this security concern and future research needs to address them.

Hardware Trojan Model For Attack And Detection Techniques

Today's integrated circuits (ICs) are vulnerable to hardware Trojans, which are malicious alterations to the circuit, either during design or fabrication. The interventions of human in production of Hardware resources have given room for possible modification of hardware components, so as to achieve some malicious aims. This modification help with possible loop holes in the hardware component for later attack. Due to the increase in popularity aim of attacks using embedded Trojan horse programs into chips, attacker are more likely to suppress them with malicious program, also notwithstanding the increase in disintegration of the design and manufacturing process of our microelectronic products (ICs), we should not only concern about inclusion of unplanned, undesirable hardware features (" bugs "), rather about inclusion of planned malicious hardware features: " Trojan Horses, " which act as spies or guerrillas. This paper presents a Model of the fundamental attacks and possible detection techniques of Hardware Trojan. The result of the research has shown a great significance in education and for further researches.

A New Characterization of Hardware Trojans

IEEE Access, 2016

This paper examines hardware trojan threats to semiconductor chips, which is particularly important for chips intended for vital infrastructure and critical applications. The phases of the chip production life-cycle are considered in terms of the opportunities for trojan insertion. Trojans are examined based on eight attribute categories. A matrix identifying the relationships between these attributes is defined. This matrix is used to characterize hardware trojans from both the attacker and defender perspectives. Two case studies are given to illustrate the usefulness of the proposed approach. INDEX TERMS Hardware trojans, chip life cycle, hardware trojan taxonomy, hardware trojan attributes.

Towards Trojan-Free Trusted ICs: Problem Analysis and Detection Scheme

2008 Design, Automation and Test in Europe, 2008

There have been serious concerns recently about the security of microchips from hardware trojan horse insertion during manufacturing. This issue has been raised recently due to outsourcing of the chip manufacturing processes to reduce cost. This is an important consideration especially in critical applications such as avionics, communications, military, industrial and so on. A trojan is inserted into a main circuit at manufacturing and is mostly inactive unless it is triggered by a rare value or time event; then it produces a payload error in the circuit, potentially catastrophic. Because of its nature, a trojan may not be easily detected by functional or ATPG testing. The problem of trojan detection has been addressed only recently in very few works. Our work analyzes and formulates the trojan detection problem based on a frequency analysis under rare trigger values and provides procedures to generate input trigger vectors and trojan test vectors to detect trojan effects. We also provide experimental results.

Hardware Security in IoT Devices with Emphasis on Hardware Trojans

Journal of Sensor and Actuator Networks, 2019

Security of IoT devices is getting a lot of attention from researchers as they are becoming prevalent everywhere. However, implementation of hardware security in these devices has been overlooked, and many researches have mainly focused on software, network, and cloud security. A deeper understanding of hardware Trojans (HTs) and protection against them is of utmost importance right now as they are the prime threat to the hardware. This paper emphasizes the need for a secure hardware-level foundation for security of these devices, as depending on software security alone is not adequate enough. These devices must be protected against sophisticated attacks, especially if the groundwork for the attacks is already laid in devices during design or manufacturing process, such as with HTs. This paper will discuss the stealthy nature of these HT, highlight HT taxonomy and insertion methods, and provide countermeasures.

SALWARE: Salutary Hardware to design Trusted IC

2013

Fabless semiconductor industries are facing the rise of design costs of integrated circuits. This rise is link to the technology change and the complexity increasing. It follows that integrated circuits have become targets of counterfeiting and theft. The SALWARE project aims to study (theoretically and experimentally) salutary hardware design in order to fight against theft, illegal cloning and counterfeiting of integrated circuits. Salutary hardware means an embedded hardware system, hardly detectable / circumvented, inserted in an integrated circuit or a virtual component (Intellectual Property), used to provide intellectual property information (eg watermarking or hardware license) and / or to remotely activate the circuit or IP after manufacture and during use.

A Survey on Hardware Security: Current Trends and Challenges

IEEE Access

Hardware security has become a critical concern due to the globalization of the Integrated Circuit (IC) supply chain and the complex network connections of computing-intensive devices. Hardware security is essential in the modern world, as more and more connectivity of the Internet of Things (IoT) has paved the way for improvements in personalized healthcare, communication between home (or office) equipment, and the promise of self-driving cars, airplanes, and smart grid systems. As a result, recently, this field has attracted particular attention from the researcher. A significant amount of research has already been conducted to detect, defend, and create resiliency against hardware attacks. This paper investigates different hardware security approaches in the state-of-the-art literature and outlines their advantages and drawbacks. This paper also provides a comprehensive study of hardware security attacks, and their features, and categorizes different attack types. Finally, it presents the current challenges of the hardware security field and the impact of each one on the IC production supply chain. INDEX TERMS Machine learning, the Internet of Things (IoT), AES, hardware security, privacy, neural networks.