Temperature‐variation‐based hardware Trojan detection through ring oscillator

Abstract

Hardware Trojan (HT) insertions have emerged as a major security concern for integrated circuits. HT can cause undesired change in functional behaviour, while it also changes the temperature characteristic of the chip. A temperature variation-based HT detection technique through ring oscillator is proposed. Ring-oscillator is a thermally sensitive digital oscillator, and the number of oscillations that the counter counts varies with temperature. It is shown that the ring oscillator's count in a chip with HT insertion in a fixed duration drops faster. With this count, statistical analysis finds that the deviation between the maximum and minimum value in a chip without HT insertion is approximate to another, while HT insertion will cause the deviation value extend. Then, we present a Trojan detection approach using ring oscillator's count analysis. Experimental results show that the proposed approach achieves more effective and easier for Trojan detection. Moreover, the proposed detection approach can be used to detect different HT insertion in different place on the chips.