Hardware Trojan with Frequency Modulation

Abstract: The use of third-party IP cores in implementing applications in FPGAs has given rise to the threat of malicious alterations through the insertion of hardware Trojans. To address this threat, it is important to predict the way hardware Trojans are built and to identify their weaknesses. This paper describes a logic family for implementing robust hardware Trojans, which can evade the two major detection methods, namely unused-circuit identification and side-channel analysis. This robustness is achieved by encoding information in frequency rather than amplitude so that the Trojan trigger circuitry's state will never stay constant during 'normal' operation. In addition, the power consumption of Trojan circuits built using the proposed logic family can be concealed with minimal design effort and supplementary hardware resources. Defense measures against hardware Trojans with frequency modulation are described.