Extended abstract: Designer’s hardware Trojan horse

We introduce the first approach for pre-synthesis embedding of hardware Trojan horses (HTHs) by the designer. The embedded HTH gives the designer a low layer control over the hardware that can be exploited post-manufacturing. We identify the essential components for the exploit, outline the pre-synthesis implementation, and discuss detection. The new HTH embedding approach is low-overhead, effective, and hard to detect/remove. We emphasize that the diagnosis and isolation of designerpsilas HTHs is a standing research challenge.