Applying HP Counters for Hardware Trust Enhancement in IoT Platforms

Hardware Trojans (HTs) are malicious modifications pintroduced into hardware by attackers. Still an open problem at the device level, HT is even more challenging in the ground-breaking realm of internet of things (IoT). Online test methods proposed in the literature for Trojan monitoring in devices, are too costly for IoT processing nodes, where performance and power consumption are serious limitations. This paper presents a server-based HT detection method for IoT, based on remote monitoring of hardware performance counters (HPC). An HPC monitoring method is implemented on an MIPS32 microAptive UP, mapped on Cyclone V FPGA board, DE0-CV. The remote monitoring method is simulated in COOJA. The result shows the effectiveness of the proposed method to detect Trojans with system-level payloads.Hardware Trojans (HTs) are malicious modifications pintroduced into hardware by attackers. Still an open problem at the device level, HT is even more challenging in the ground-breaking realm of internet of things (IoT). Online test methods proposed in the literature for Trojan monitoring in devices, are too costly for IoT processing nodes, where performance and power consumption are serious limitations. This paper presents a server-based HT detection method for IoT, based on remote monitoring of hardware performance counters (HPC). An HPC monitoring method is implemented on an MIPS32 microAptive UP, mapped on Cyclone V FPGA board, DE0-CV. The remote monitoring method is simulated in COOJA. The result shows the effectiveness of the proposed method to detect Trojans with system-level payloads.