Benchmarking Security Closure of Physical Layouts

Abstract

Computer-aided design (CAD) tools mainly optimize for power, performance, and area (PPA). However, given a large number of serious hardware-security threats that are emerging, future CAD flows must also incorporate techniques for designing secure integrated circuits (ICs). In fact, the stakes are quite high for IC vendors and design companies, as security risks that are not addressed during design time will inevitably be exploited in the field, where vulnerabilities are almost impossible to fix. However, there is currently little to no experience related to designing secure ICs available within the CAD community. For the very first time, this contest seeks to actively engage with the community to close this gap. The theme of this contest is security closure of physical layouts, that is, hardening the physical layouts at design time against threats that are executed post-design time. More specifically, this contest is focused on selected and seminal threats that, once taken in, are relatively simple to approach and mitigate through means of physical design: Trojan insertion and probing as well as fault injection. Acting as security engineers, contest participants will iteratively and proactively evaluate and fix the vulnerabilities of provided benchmark layouts. Benchmarks and submissions are based on the generic DEF format and related files. Thus, participants are free to use any physical-design tools of their choice, helping us to open up the contest to the community at large.