A defense mechanism against hardware Trojan insertion by third-party intellectual property (IP) design blocks in AES-based secured communication system

Abstract

The available hardware Trojan insertion techniques in IC design and the prevention methods against these hardware Trojans are reviewed. The focus of the paper is on the hardware Trojan insertion by the third-party IP design blocks and its prevention method. The AES-based secured communication system codename Alpha is demonstrated to be susceptible to the hardware Trojan insertion that is induced by the third-party IP design blocks. In order to prevent this hardware Trojan to manifest in Alpha system, the Alpha system is modified and redesigned. The Trojan-infected Alpha system and modified Alpha system codename ModAlpha are implemented on the ATLYS board. The area utilization and timing information of both systems are extracted and analyzed. The hardware implementation results for both systems are also observed on the UART terminal after the message is inputted by the keyboard. It is proven that the Trojan-infected Alpha system leaks the encryption key on the UART terminal while the modified Alpha system produces the correct cipher text.