Strong Logic Obfuscation with Low Overhead against IC Reverse Engineering Attacks

Abstract

Untrusted foundries pose threats of integrated circuit (IC) piracy and counterfeiting, and this has motivated research into logic locking. Strong logic locking approaches potentially prevent piracy and counterfeiting by preventing unauthorized replication and use of ICs. Unfortunately, recent work has shown that most state-of-the-art logic locking techniques are vulnerable to attacks that utilize Boolean Satisfiability (SAT) solvers. In this article, we extend our prior work on using silicon nanowire (SiNW) field-effect transistors (FETs) to produce obfuscated ICs that are resistant to reverse engineering attacks, such as the sensitization attack, SAT and approximate SAT attacks, as well as tracked signal attacks. Our method is based on exchanging some logic gates in the original design with a set of polymorphic gates (PLGs), designed using SiNW FETs, and augmenting the circuit with a small block, whose output is untraceable, namely, URSAT. The URSAT may not offer very strong resilience against the combined AppSAT-removal attack. Strong URSAT is achieved using only CMOS-logic gates, namely, S-URSAT. The proposed technique, S-URSAT + PLG-based traditional encryption, designed using SiNW FETs, increases the security level of the design to robustly thwart all existing attacks, including combined AppSAT-removal attack, with small penalties. Then, we evaluate the effectiveness of our proposed methods and subject it to a thorough security analysis. We also evaluate the performance penalty of the technique and find that it results in very small overheads in comparison to other works. The average area, power, and delay overheads of implementing 64 baseline key-bits of S-URSAT for small benchmarks are 5.03%, 2.60%, and −2.26%, respectively, while for large benchmarks they are 2.37%, 1.18%, and −1.93%.

Satisfiability Attack-Resistant Camouflaged Two-Dimensional Heterostructure Devices

“…Among the emerging devices that offer to enhance hardware security, silicon nanowire (SiNW) FETs appear to render a promising solution with respect to circuit obfuscation . Logic gates in the original netlist are replaced with polymorphic gates (PLGs), which are designed using SiNW FETs.…”

“…Among the emerging devices that offer to enhance hardware security, silicon nanowire (SiNW) FETs appear to render a promising solution with respect to circuit obfuscation. 56 Logic gates in the original netlist are replaced with polymorphic gates (PLGs), which are designed using SiNW FETs. These PLGs need to be tuned with a set of key inputs to achieve the functionality of one of the AND, OR, NAND, NOR, XOR, and XNOR logic gates.…”

Vertical IP Protection of the Next-Generation Devices: Quo Vadis?

“…These reconfigurable properties form the very basis, why RFETs are so widely applicable in hardware security [56,57,58,59]. We look at few of the security schemes which are possible due to this inherent reconfiguration.…”

Internet of Things Security Requirements, Threats, Attacks, and Countermeasures

“…The practice of contaminating web applications with malevolent software is termed malware. In Recent Times, a massive number of malwares has been devised for attacking IoT systems [75,76] Control flow side-channel assessment [77], software integrity validation, malware detector [78], Security updates [79] (continued) Reverse Engineering All An attempt to analyze the firmware of IoT devices to reach sensitive data i.e., users' credentials [93] Self-destruction and Tamper proofing, IC/IP Obfuscation and encryption [94,95] (continued) Identity and access management, authentication, multi-factor authentication guidance, dynamic credentials [100] Brute-force attacks S4, S6 An active attack hinges on a trial-and-error strategy to obtain some data such as passwords, finance, identifiers. It employs automatic software to engender a massive amount of successive suppositions to decrypt the ciphertext [85,86] Locking out IP address, discovery tools, brute force site scanning tools [101] Data exposure attacks…”