A case study in hardware Trojan design and implementation

Abstract

As integrated circuits (ICs) continue to have an overwhelming presence in our digital information-dominated world, having trust in their manufacture and distribution mechanisms is crucial. However, with ever-shrinking transistor technologies, the cost of new fabrication facilities is becoming prohibitive, pushing industry to make greater use of potentially less reliable foreign sources for their IC supply. The 2008 Computer Security Awareness Week (CSAW) Embedded Systems Challenge at the Polytechnic Institute of NYU highlighted some of the vulnerabilities of the IC supply chain in the form of a hardware hacking challenge. This paper explores the design and implementation of our winning entry.

Hardware Trojans. Part2: examples of implementation, methods of insertion and activation

“…In particular, it is noted that the operating system determines the software component of the memory access mechanism and it can detect a signal delay associated with the introduction of a modification. Also paper [1] shows common approaches to ensure the protection against these malicious processors.…”

“…Paper [1] gives two of the most common approaches to creating malicious processors. The authors show how the electric circuits of hardware Trojans can be embedded in the processor to carry out such attacks as the theft of passwords, access privileges extension and automatic logins to the system.…”

“…В работе [1] представлены два наиболее общих подхода к созданию вредоносного процессора. Авторы показывают, как электрические схемы а ппарат ны х т р оя нов мог у т бы т ь в с т р о е ны в процессор для реа лизации так их атак, как к р а ж а п ар о ле й, р а с ш и р е н ие п ри ви ле г и й доступа и автоматические логины в систему.…”

“…В частности, отмечается, что операционной системе виден программный компонент меха-низма доступа к памяти, и могут быть обна-ружены за держ к и сигна ла, связанные с вне-сением модификации. Так же в работе [1] пока-заны общие подходы для обеспечения защиты от подобных вредоносных процессоров.…”

On hardware Trojan design and implementation at register-transfer level

“…[8] developed two HTs compromising memory access mechanism and shadow mode mechanism to support software attacks without showing detailed implementation. [9], [10] presented several HT designs with various trigger methods and malicious behaviors in the embedded system challenge competition. [11] designed two simple HTs controlled by a counter for the RSA encryption circuit.…”