Analog Hardware Security and Trust
Julian Leonhard · HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe) · 2021
The ongoing globalization and specialization of the integrated circuit (IC) supply chain has led semiconductor companies to share their valuable intellectual property (IP) assets with numerous parties for means of manufacturing, testing, etc. As a consequence, sensitive IPs and ICs are being exposed to untrusted parties, resulting in serious piracy threats such as counterfeiting or reverse engineering. In this thesis we develop methods to secure analog and mixed signal IPs/ICs from piracy threats within the supply chain. We propose an anti-piracy methodology for locking mixed-signal ICs via logic locking of their digital part. Furthermore, we propose an anti-reverse engineering methodology camouflaging the effective geometry of layout components. Finally, we propose an attack to break all analog circuit locking techniques that act upon the biasing of the circuit. The presented techniques have the potential to protect analog and mixed-signal circuits against a large subset of all the possible risk scenarios while inflicting low overheads in terms of area, power and performance.