University of Florida Research Foundation Inc

Intel Corporation

Abdulrahman Alaql

Swarup Bhunia

Md Moshiur Rahman

Aritra Dasgupta

Nij Dorairaj

Prabuddha Chakraborty

David Kehlet

Saranyu Chattopadhyay

The present disclosure describes various embodiments of systems, apparatuses, and methods of protecting an integrated circuit. One such method comprises operating the integrated circuit under a normal mode of operation; detecting, by a decommission controller, a triggering condition for a decommission operation to be initiated for the integrated circuit; initiating, by the decommission controller, a decommission mode for the integrated circuit after detection of the triggering condition; and causing, by the decommission controller, functionality of the integrated circuit to be irreversibly disabled after initiating the decommission mode. Other methods, systems, and apparatus are also presented.

Decommissioning and erasing entropy in microelectronic systems

In general, embodiments of the present disclosure provide methods, apparatus, systems, computer program products, computing devices, computing entities, and/or the like for altering a design of a hardware intellectual property (IP). In accordance with various embodiments, a representation of the design of the hardware IP is converted to generate a control and data flow graph (CDFG) for the design. An entropy analysis of the CDFG is conducted to identify one or more control paths and/or data paths for removal. Responsive to identifying control path(s) for removal, control logic for the control path(s) is removed from the design and replaced with first reconfigurable logic. Responsive to identifying data path(s) for removal, datapath logic for the data path(s) is removed from the design and replaced with second reconfigurable logic. Logic synthesis is then performed on the design, along with verification to check functional correctness of the design of the hardware.

Removal of hardware intellectual property and programmable replacement

In general, embodiments of the present disclosure provide methods, apparatus, systems, computer program products, computing devices, and computing entities for modifying a design of a hardware IP. According to one embodiment, a method is provided, the method including generating a control and data flow graph (CDFG) representation for portions of the design. The method further includes partitioning the CDFG representation into a set of partitioned sub-graphs. The method further includes, for each partitioned sub-graph, generating a merged sub-graph to form a set of merged sub-graphs. Generating the merged sub-graph for each partitioned sub-graph involves generating a container sub-graph and merging the container sub-graph with the partitioned sub-graph to form the merged sub-graph. The container sub-graph may be a modification of the partitioned sub-graph with respect to an identified feature, in some examples. The method further includes synthesizing a modified design of the hardware IP including the set of merged sub-graphs.

Steganography of hardware intellectual property

A method of obfuscating a circuit design includes, in part, receiving a netlist of the circuit design, splitting the circuit design into a multitude of partitions, transforming each partitions so as to obfuscate each partition, and stitching the multitude of transformed partitions to form the obfuscated circuit. The netlist may be a register transfer level netlist. The number and the size of partitions may vary. The partitions may be distributed throughout the entirety of the design. The method may further include generating a randomized circuit associated with at least a subset of the partitions, and merging each partition with the partition's associated randomized circuit. The method may further include quantifying the amount of transformation associated with each partition. The method may further include adding a first key to at least one of the obfuscated partitions, and adding a second key to the partition's associated randomized circuit.

SARO: scalable attack-resistant obfuscation of logic circuits

The present disclosure provides systems and methods for timed unlocking and locking of hardware intellectual properties obfuscation. One such method includes determining whether received key inputs match a functional key sequence of an integrated circuit or a test key sequence of the integrated circuit; permanently enabling operation of the integrated circuit responsive to the received key inputs being determined to be a functional key sequence for permanently enabling operation of the integrated circuit; temporarily enabling operation of the integrated circuit responsive to the received key inputs being determined to be the test key sequence for temporarily enabling operation of the integrated circuit to perform testing of the functionality and disable thereafter; and locking sequential logic and combinational logic of the integrated circuit if the received key inputs are determined to not be either the functional key sequence or the test key sequence. Other systems and methods are also provided.

Timed unlocking and locking of hardware intellectual properties

The present disclosure describes exemplary methods and systems of protecting an integrated circuit. One exemplary method comprises receiving a plurality of key inputs for enabling operation of the integrated circuit; determining whether the received key inputs are correct key inputs for enabling operation of the integrated circuit; and if the received key inputs are determined to be incorrect key inputs, locking sequential logic and combinational logic of the integrated circuit until correct key inputs are received.

Hardware intellectual property protection through provably secure state-space obfuscation

Embodiments of the present disclosure provide methods, apparatus, systems, computer program products, computing devices, and/or computing entities for obfuscating a hardware intellectual property (IP) design by locking the design based at least in part on a plurality of key-bits. In one embodiment, a method is provided comprising: generating a key vulnerability matrix for a locked version of the design and a plurality of attacks that comprises for each attack, a vector comprising a value for each key-bit identifying whether the attack successfully extracted a correct key value for the key-bit; and for each key-bit: determining whether the key-bit is vulnerable to an attack based on the values in the matrix; and responsive to being vulnerable: identifying a set of solutions to mitigate the attack; selecting a solution from the set; and inserting a key-gate type for the key-bit at a location identified by the selected solution into the design.

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Gainesville, FL, United States of America

Abdulrahman Alaql