University of Florida Research Foundation Inc

Mir Tanjidur Rahman

Mark M Tehranipoor

Navid Asadi-Zanjani

Navid Asadizanjani

Damon Woodard

Haoting Shen

Shahin Tajik

Nidish Vashistha

Methods and systems are directed to protect a target logic circuit against optical probing attacks and conceal a logic state in the target logic circuit. The method comprises designing a concealing logic circuit. The concealing logic circuit can be coupled to complement of input signals of the target logic circuit, inserted as neighbor logic circuit of the target logic circuit, and placed in close optical proximity to the target logic circuit. The concealing logic circuit can operate in the opposite operation mode or logic state of the target logic circuit in response to the complement of the input signals to the target logic circuit. The method can further comprise designing an evaluation circuit that generates the complement of the input signals and minimizes a path delay between the target logic circuit input and the concealing logic circuit input.

Apparatus for protecting against optical probing attacks

A method of detecting hardware Trojans in an IC includes providing a golden IC layout data set or SEM image data taken at long dwelling time on an active area of the golden IC after polishing it from the backside. Next, the IC under authentication (IUA) sample is prepared for fast SEM imagining (shorter dwelling time) after backside thinning. Next step is to perform image processing on the IUA's SEM image, which includes histogram equalization with noise filtering using Gaussian and Median filters. In the last step, the IUA sample data with the shorter dwelling time is compared with the golden IC layout data or the golden image data from high quality (longer dwelling time) SEM scanning process. At the end the result of the comparison is used to identify hardware Trojans.

Hardware trojan scanner

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Gainesville, FL, United States of America

Mir Tanjidur Rahman