Golden-Free Processor Hardware Trojan Detection Using Bit Power Consistency Analysis

Abstract

Processor is the core chip of modern information system, which is severely threatened by hardware Trojan. Side-channel analysis is the most promising method for hardware Trojan detection. However, most existing detection methods require golden chips as reference, which significantly increases the test cost and complexity. In this paper, we propose a golden-free detection method that exploits the bit power consistency of processor. For the data activated processor hardware Trojan, the power model of processor is modified. Two decomposition methods of power signal are proposed: the differential bit power consistency analysis and the contradictory equations solution. With the proposed method, each bit power can be calculated. The bit consistency based detection algorithms are proposed, the deviation boundaries are obtained by statistical analysis. Experimental measurements were done on field programmable gate array chip with open source 8051 core and hardware Trojans. The results showed that the differences between the two methods were very small. The data activated processor hardware Trojans were detected successfully.