An Analog Payload Trojan via Power-Supply Harmonic Coupling in Front-End Circuits
Ramana Ranganatham, Tejasvi Das · 2024
The increase in number of secure systems that rely on integrated circuits (ICs) to perform their functions has exponentially risen over the past several years. Combined with the advent of hardware trojans and the distributed approach to IC design and fabrication, the trustworthiness of fabricated ICs has come into question. Various methods for identifying trojans early in testing and developing secure methodologies for designing digital systems have been proposed. However, the concept of trojans functioning solely in the analog domain is in its infancy. This paper presents a novel analog trojan payload architecture that is both difficult to detect and requires very minimal overheads. It does not alter the content of the signal path and instead transmits leaked information by modulating already-existing harmonics in an analog front-end power supply within the PVT (Process, Voltage, and Temperature) margins of the system.