Analog hardware trojan design and detection in OFDM based wireless cryptographic ICs

Abstract

Due to Hardware Trojan (HT), trustworthiness of Integrated Circuit (IC) supply chain is a burning issue in Semiconductor Industry nowadays. Over the last decade, extensive research has been carried on HT detection methods for digital circuits. However, the HT issue remains largely unexplored in the domain of Analog Mixed Signal (AMS)/ RF circuit where it is now an appealing target for the attackers. The increasing popularity of Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) based wireless cryptographic ICs in modern communication systems makes it a lucrative target for HT-based attacks which could have a devastating impact on data security. This paper presents a trigger-based Hardware Trojan Threat model that exploits the extended cyclic prefix (ECP) property of the OFDM communication scheme to leak the secret encryption key over low noise Additive White Gaussian Channel (AWGN) and developed a Cyclic Prefix (CP) checker based detection mechanism named “SENTRY” to detect such trojans once it is triggered.