Real-time trust evaluation in integrated circuits

The use of side-channel measurements and fingerprinting, in conjunction with statistical analysis, has proven to be the most effective method for accurately detecting hardware Trojans in fabricated integrated circuits. However, these post-fabrication trust evaluation methods overlook the capabilities of advanced design skills that attackers can use in designing sophisticated Trojans. To this end, we have designed a Trojan using power-gating techniques and demonstrate that it can be masked from advanced side-channel fingerprinting detection while dormant. We then propose a real-time trust evaluation framework that continuously monitors the on-board global power consumption to monitor chip trustworthiness. The measurements obtained corroborate our frameworks effectiveness for detecting Trojans. Finally, the results presented are experimentally verified by performing measurements on fabricated Trojan-free and Trojan-infected variants of a reconfigurable linear feedback shift register (LFSR) array.