Insights into the Mind of a Trojan Designer: The Challenge to Integrate a Trojan into the Bitstream
This addresses security threats for integrated circuits in real-world applications, focusing on FPGA configurations, but appears incremental as it builds on existing methods.
The paper tackles the problem of hardware Trojans in integrated circuits, particularly through malicious manipulation of FPGA bitstreams, by presenting an improved methodology for bitstream file format reversing and a novel idea for Trojan insertion.
The threat of inserting hardware Trojans during the design, production, or in-field poses a danger for integrated circuits in real-world applications. A particular critical case of hardware Trojans is the malicious manipulation of third-party FPGA configurations. In addition to attack vectors during the design process, FPGAs can be infiltrated in a non-invasive manner after shipment through alterations of the bitstream. First, we present an improved methodology for bitstream file format reversing. Second, we introduce a novel idea for Trojan insertion.