Rules and FAQs

Eligibility and Registration

This competition is open to students enrolled in undergraduate or graduate degree programs from around the world. Teams must identify an advisor -- either a faculty member, industry or governmental representative.

• Registration is required and will remain open until 7 October 2019, 23:59 EST.
• There is no limit to the number of team members during the Qualification Round, but all members must be students enrolled in an undergraduate or graduate degree program. Please note that we anticipate that only 2 team members per finalist team will be invited to participate in Finals.
• Team members do not need to attend the same university/college.
• All players must compete under only 1 team name; playing for multiple teams is not permitted.
• Teams should work independently. Sharing answers privately or publicly, or collaborating with another team to secure multiple spots at Finals constitutes cheating.

Resources

Competitors will be given access to locked netlists and oracles (as executable binaries). Teams can use whatever techniques/algorithms they wish, but will be expected to document, explain, and justify their approaches.

Q: Where and when does Finals take place?

Answer: Finals will be held during CSAW '19, 6-8 November 2019 at NYU Tandon School of Engineering in Brooklyn, New York. Final poster presentations will be held on Friday, 8 November 2019. If you are a finalist and are unable to travel to Finals at NYU Tandon School of Engineering you can participate in Finals remotely.

Q: Will all participants attack a locking technique? Can participants offer locked defenses?

Answer: Participants can either attack a locked netlist or can volunteer a defense (i.e. offer a locked netlist) or both

Q: I am from a university located within the United States. I would like to participate. How will I be supported?

Answer: NYU CCS will pay for the travel and lodging costs of finalist participants from US universities (through an NSF CRI grant). We anticipate supporting 2 student participants per team.

Q: I am from a non-US university. I would like to take part. How will I be supported?

Answer: NYU CCS cannot pay for the travel and lodging costs of finalist participants from non-US Universities. You have to make your own arrangements. If you are a finalist and are unable to travel to Finals at NYU Tandon School of Engineering in New York City (6 - 8 November 2019), you can participate in Finals remotely.

Q: How are US government agencies involved in this?

Answer: Initially, we expect SMEs from agencies participating in this program. In the long term, this may inform programs that the agencies may plan.

Q: I am from a company. How can I contribute to Logic Locking Conquest?

Answer: You can request to be a judge or an observer. You can advise a team (although only student members will be eligible for travel and awards etc). You can sponsor student travel, etc.

Q: I am an SME from the US Government. How can I contribute to Logic Locking Conquest?

Answer: You can request to be a judge or as an observer. You can advise a team (although only student members will eligible for travel and awards, etc). You can sponsor student travel, etc.

Q: I am a University researcher and I am not an expert in logic locking. How can I take part?

Answer: You can form and advise a team and bring a revolutionary new perspective and solution to this problem.

Q: What are the prizes?

Answer: TBD

Q: Who do I contact with questions?

Answer: You can email Benjamin Tan (csaw-logiclocking@nyu.edu)

For combinational logic locking:

J. A. Roy, F. Koushanfar and I. L. Markov, "EPIC: Ending Piracy of Integrated Circuits," 2008 Design, Automation and Test in Europe, Munich, 2008, pp. 1069-1074. doi: 10.1109/DATE.2008.4484823

URL: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=4484823

A. Sengupta, M. Nabeel, M. Yasin and O. Sinanoglu, "ATPG-based cost-effective, secure logic locking," 2018 IEEE 36th VLSI Test Symposium (VTS), San Francisco, CA, 2018, pp. 1-6. doi: 10.1109/VTS.2018.8368625

URL: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=8368625&isnumber=8368610

Not sure where to begin? You can try to unlock using a SAT-based tool: https://github.com/DfX-NYUAD/CCS17 and come up with your own strategy...

For sequential logic locking:

Chakraborty, Rajat Subhra, and Swarup Bhunia. "HARPOON: an obfuscation-based SoC design methodology for hardware protection," IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems 28.10 (2009): 1493-1502.

URL: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/5247148

N.B: While this article bears some similarity to the algorithm used in this challenge, the implementation strategies used are not identical