Abstract
The microcircuit industry is witnessing a massive outsourcing of the fabrication of ICs (Integrated Circuit), as well as the use of third party IP (Intellectual Property) and COTS (Commercial Off-The-Shelf) tools during IC design. These issues raise new security challenges and threats. In particular, it brings up multiple opportunities for the insertion of malicious logic, commonly referred to as a hardware Trojan, in the IC. Testing is typically used along the IC development lifecycle to verify the functional correctness of a given chip. However, the complexity of modern ICs, together with resource and time limitations, makes exhaustive testing commonly unfeasible. In this paper, we propose a game-theoretic approachfor testing digital circuits that takes into account the decision-making process of intelligent attackers responsible for the infection of ICs with hardware Trojans. Testing for hardware Trojans is modeled as a zero-sum game between malicious manufacturers or designers (i.e., the attacker) who want to insert Trojans, and testers (i.e., the defender) whose goal is to detect the Trojans. The game results in multiple possible mixed strategy Nash equilibria that allow to identify optimum test sets that increase the probability of detecting and defeating hardware Trojans in digital logic.
Keywords
The rights of this work are transferred to the extent transferable according to title 17 § 105 U.S.C.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Lai, K.-W., Siewiorek, D.P.: Functional Testing of Digital Systems. In: Proc. of the 20th Design Automation Conference, DAC 1983 (1983)
Wolff, F., Papachristou, C., Bhunia, S., Chakraborty, R.S.: Towards Trojan-Free Trusted ICs: Problem Analysis and Detection Scheme. In: Proc. of the 2008 Design, Automation and Test in Europe, DATE 2008 (2008)
Jha, S., Jha, S.: Randomization Based Probabilistic Approach To Detect Trojan Circuits. In: Proc. of the 11th IEEE High Assurance Systems Engineering Symposium, HASE 2008 (2008)
Chakraborty, R.S., Wolff, F., Paul, S., Papachristou, C., Bhunia, S.: MERO: A Statistical Approach for Hardware Trojan Detection. In: Clavier, C., Gaj, K. (eds.) CHES 2009. LNCS, vol. 5747, pp. 396–410. Springer, Heidelberg (2009)
Salmani, H., Tehranipoor, M., Plusquellic, J.: New Design Strategy for Improving Hardware Trojan Detection and Reducing Trojan Activation Time. In: Proc. of the 2009 IEEE International Workshop on Hardware-Oriented Security and Trust, HOST 2009 (2009)
Chakraborty, R.S., Paul, S., Bhunia, S.: On-demand transparency for improving hardware trojan detectability. In: Proc. of the 2008 IEEE International Workshop on Hardware-Oriented Security and Trust, HOST 2008 (2008)
Kukreja, N., Halfond, W., Tambe, M.: Randomizing Regression Tests Using Game Theory. In: Proc. of the 2013 IEEE/ACM 28th Int. Conf. on Automated Software Engineering, ASE (2013)
Howard, C.: Counterfeit Component Chaos. Military and Aerospace Electronics (12) (December 24, 2013)
Savani, R.: Solve a Bimatrix Game, http://banach.lse.ac.uk
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this paper
Cite this paper
Kamhoua, C.A., Rodriguez, M., Kwiat, K.A. (2014). Testing for Hardware Trojans: A Game-Theoretic Approach. In: Poovendran, R., Saad, W. (eds) Decision and Game Theory for Security. GameSec 2014. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 8840. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-12601-2_22
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-12601-2_22
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-12600-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-12601-2
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)