Design and Analysis of Secure ALU: Detection of Malicious Modifications
R Sai Meghana, Meghana Kulkarni · 2025
Malicious hardware modifications known as Hardware Trojans (HT) have become more common in recent years due to the growing reliance on third-party Intellectual Property (IP) cores, outsourced manufacture, and sophisticated design techniques. These secret changes have the potential to damage system security by allowing backdoor access, compromising functionality, or revealing personal information. A thorough investigation of hardware Trojan insertion and detection in a 4-bit Arithmetic Logic Unit (ALU) is presented in this research. Xilinx Vivado is used to design the ALU. Techniques for Trojan insertion are investigated, in which malicious logic is incorporated to alter outputs under particular circumstances. The experimental findings show that Trojan detection methods can successfully spot unusual activity brought on by malicious changes. This study emphasizes how important safe hardware design techniques are to reducing new risks in contemporary digital systems.