Loading...

Designing and Evaluation of Hardware Backdoors In a Typical Processor

Asadi, Mohammad Reza | 2013

376 Viewed
  1. Type of Document: M.Sc. Thesis
  2. Language: Farsi
  3. Document No: 45553 (19)
  4. University: Sharif University of Technology
  5. Department: Computer Engineering
  6. Advisor(s): Jahangir, Amir Hossein
  7. Abstract:
  8. Recently, security of integrated circuits has received more attention as ICs have become more complex and their usage has increased in safety critical systems. Many orgeniaztions use the ICs that made by third party companies. This is due to the high costs to build and maintain state-of-the-art semiconductor factories. This subject puts the trustworthiness of the ICs under the question. The chips might be maliciously modified in each stage of the manufacturing chain. This threat is called hardware backdoor in scientific community. The aim of this project is to assess the features embedded in a microprocessor and evaluate the side channel effect of various hardware backdoors. hardware backdoors are less likely de-tectable due to reduction in side channel effect and severity of process variation in technol-ogies under 65nm. The features we explored or used to evaluate hardware backdoors are the amount of slack time in different paths, nodes that are difficult to control or observe and circuits with low activity rate. In addition, designing these malicious circuits using gates with higher threshold voltages as a low power design method, has been used to re-duce the leakage power of these circuits. Results based on simulation indicate that there are some parts in LEON2 microprocessor which are susceptible to hardware backdoors. Also, malicious designer can insert side channel aware hardware backdoors which are hardly de-tectable
  9. Keywords:
  10. Vulnerability ; Security ; Microprocessors ; Hardware Backdoors ; Malicious Designer ; Side Channel Effect

 Digital Object List

 Bookmark

No TOC