T-TER: Defeating A2 Trojans with Targeted Tamper-Evident Routing
Timothy Trippel, Kang Geun Shin, Kevin B. Bush, Matthew Hicks · 2023
Since the inception of the Integrated Circuit (IC), the size of the transistors used to construct them has continually shrunk. While this advancement significantly improves computing capability, fabrication costs have skyrocketed. As a result, most IC designers must now outsource fabrication. Outsourcing, however, presents a security threat: comprehensive post-fabrication inspection is infeasible given the size of modern ICs, so it is nearly impossible to know if the foundry has altered the original design during fabrication (i.e., inserted a hardware Trojan). Defending against a foundry-side adversary is challenging because—even with as few as two gates—hardware Trojans can completely undermine software security. Researchers have attempted to both detect and prevent foundry-side attacks, but all existing defenses are ineffective against additive Trojans with footprints of a few gates or less.