Hardware Trojan by Hot Carrier Injection

Abstract: This paper discusses how hot carrier injection (HCI) can be exploited to create a trojan that will cause hardware failures. The trojan is produced not via additional logic circuitry but by controlled scenarios that maximize and accelerate the HCI effect in transistors. These scenarios range from manipulating the manufacturing process to varying the internal voltage distribution. This new type of trojan is difficult to test due to its gradual hardware degradation mechanism. This paper describes the HCI effect, detection techniques and discusses the possibility for maliciously induced HCI trojans.