Excellence in Research: Improving the Integrity and Security of Integrated Circuits Through Effective Detection of Malicious Alterations

在今天的信息时代，我们生活的方方面面都依赖于技术。运行这项技术的硬件核心是集成电路（IC）。虽然集成电路（ic）无处不在地部署在现代电子/信息系统中，处理我们日常生活中的关键数据，但由于电子设计供应链的全球化，这些ic的设计和制造越来越容易受到恶意活动和更改的影响（即，电子系统中使用的大多数ic现在都在美国以外制造）。攻击者（不受信任的代工厂）可能会通过在IC掩模中植入硬件木马来破坏制造过程本身，从而在将来某个时间禁用和/或破坏系统，或者木马可能会将机密/敏感信息秘密泄露给攻击者。今天，攻击者可以巧妙地隐藏木马程序，使芯片测试/验证过程变得极其困难（因为攻击者可以完全访问测试信息，因为制造测试通常在芯片制造现场进行）。这些漏洞引起了人们对许多关键系统的潜在威胁的严重关注，包括军事、金融、电信、能源和交通基础设施。该项目的重点是定义制造后测试步骤（在电子系统集成之前），以提高海上设施制造的ic的可信度，以验证芯片与其原始功能和性能规范的一致性。具体来说，该项目将分析电路延迟作为检测和定位硬件木马的方法，并开发新的方法，如时钟频率扫描，以在存在进程变化的情况下针对木马。为了提高效率，计划的研究活动将是开发一种芯片上的测量技术，以锁定时钟扫描方法无法检测的遗漏路径或短路径来检测木马。提出了两种互补的方法，可以有效地检测和定位各种类型的硬件木马。其他计划的研究活动包括在现场可编程门阵列（fpga）上实现不同类型的硬件木马，以及开发收集到的硅数据的统计分析方法。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

In today’s information age every aspect of our lives depends on technology. In the core of the hardware that runs this technology is the integrated circuit (IC). While integrated circuits (ICs) are ubiquitously deployed in modern electronic/information systems that process critical data in our daily lives, the design and fabrication of these ICs however are becoming increasingly vulnerable to malicious activities and alterations due to the globalization of electronic design supply chain (i.e., most of the ICs used in electronic systems are now fabricated outside the United States). An adversary (untrusted foundry) could potentially subvert the fabrication process itself by implanting a hardware Trojan into the IC mask to disable and/or destroy a system at some future time or the Trojan may serve to leak confidential/sensitive information covertly to the adversary. Today, Trojans can be cleverly hidden by the adversary to make it extremely difficult for chip test/validation processes (since the adversary has complete access to test information as manufacturing tests are typically performed at the chip fabrication site). These vulnerabilities have raised serious concerns regarding possible threats to many critical systems including military, financial, telecommunications, energy, and transportation infrastructures. The focus of this project is to define a post-manufacturing test step (prior to electronics system integration) to increase trustworthiness of the ICs fabricated at offshore facilities to validate the conformance of the chip with its original functionality and performance specification. Specifically, this project will analyze circuit delays as a method to detect and locate hardware Trojans and develop novel methods such as clock frequency sweeping for targeting Trojans in presence of process variations. To increase efficiency, the planned research activity will be to develop an on-chip measurement technique to target paths missed or short paths not testable by the clock sweeping method to detect Trojans. This proposed two complementary approaches will effectively detect and localize all types of hardware Trojans. Other planned research activities include implementation of different types of hardware Trojans on field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and development of statistical analysis methods for the collected silicon data.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.