Hardware Trojan Detection

As the supply chain of semiconductor integrated circuits becomes more complex, there is a threat that hardware Trojan circuits, which are malicious circuits, may be inserted into integrated circuits. Hardware Trojan circuits are difficult to detect in tests for fault detection because they are triggered under special conditions. Therefore, we are addressing methods to detect hardware Trojan circuits by performing side-channel analysis that observes signals other than primary input/output of circuits.

Dependable System Laboratory is investigating a method to detect hardware Trojan circuits by analyzing the power when a test pattern for fault detection is applied. We have proposed a method to effectively detect hardware Trojan circuits by enabling the switching of any transistor in the circuit by using a test pattern for fault detection, and by switching only certain segments by using a test circuit called a scan chain and clock gating. Our proposed method considers the practicality. We have proposed a technique that does not use circuits known to be Trojan-free, called golden ICs, and a clock gating technique based on clock trees.