Reliability of Physical Systems: Detection of Malicious Subcircuits (Trojan Circuits) in Sequential Circuits

Abstract

Reliability of physical systems is provided by reliability of their parts including logical ones. Insertion of malicious subcircuits that can destroy logical circuit or cause leakage of confidential information from a system necessitates the detection of such subcircuits followed by their masking if possible. We suggest a method of finding a set of sequential circuit nodes in which Trojan Circuits can be inserted. The method is based on random estimations of controllability and observability of combinational nodes calculated using a description of sequential circuit working area and an evidence of existence of a transfer sequence for the proper set of internal states without finding the sequence itself. The method allows cutting calculations using operations on Reduced Ordered Binary Decision Diagrams (ROBDDs) that can depend only on the state variables of the circuit. The approach, unlike traditional ones, does not require preliminary sequential circuit simulation but can use its results. It can be used when malicious circuits cannot be detected during sequential circuit verification.