Fundamentals on HLS-based hardware Trojan
Anirban Sengupta, Mahendra Rathor · 2024
The chapter describes the fundamentals of high-level synthesis (HLS)-based hardware Trojan and its various types. This chapter provides an overview of hardware Trojan and discusses the motivation for an adversary to perform an HLS-based hardware Trojan attack. Further, it highlights the potential sites for hardware Trojan insertion in the semiconductor design supply chain. It discusses in detail the three different types of HLS-based hardware Trojan attacks followed by hardware Trojan in 3PIP modules.The organization of the chapter is as follows: Section 10.1 discusses a brief overview of hardware Trojan, different ways of the hardware Trojan insertion followed by the Trojan insertion during HLS and its potential effects; Section 10.2 provides an overview of three different types of HLS-based hardware Trojan attacks, viz. battery exhaustion, degradation, and downgrade, and discusses the threat scenario. Section 10.3 presents insights on battery exhaustion attacks with a motivational example. Section 10.4 presents insights on degradation attacks with a motivational example while discussing its impact on security and overhead. Section 10.4 presents insights on downgrade attack and explains with the help of compromising secure hash algorithm; Section 10.5 presents insights on hardware Trojan in 3PIP modules and explains using an example; Section 10.6 concludes the chapter.