Hardware Trojan detection with linear regression based gate-level characterization

• Main Authors: Zhang, Li, Chang, Chip-Hong
• Other Authors: School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
• Format: Conference or Workshop Item
• Language: English
• Published: 2015
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Electrical and electronic engineering::Computer hardware, software and systems
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/105038; http://hdl.handle.net/10220/25169; http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/APCCAS.2014.7032768
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Due to outsourcing of IC fabrication, chip supply contamination is a clear and present danger, of which hardware Trojans (HTs) pose the greatest threat. This paper reviews the limitation of existing gate level characterization approaches to HT detection and presents a new detection method with a faster estimation of gate scaling factors by solving the normal equation of linear regression model. The HT-infected circuit can be distinguished from the genuine circuit without the need for a golden reference chip by their discrepancies in the bias parameter of the linear regression and a subset of the accurately estimated scaling factors. It has high detection sensitivity as long as the Trojan-to-circuit gate count ratio exceeds 0.4%.