Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Book cover

Hardware Security and Trust pp 169–187Cite as

Ring Oscillators and Hardware Trojan Detection

  • Chapter
  • First Online:

Abstract

Hardware Trojan horses is a realistic threat in the modern IC supply chain. Once the associate risk is considered, appropriate defense mechanisms must be designed and employed at the various stages in order to detect such hardware malware. We propose two novel uses of ring oscillators, one as an attack vector against hardware implementations of true random number generators and one as an on-chip detection method for Trojans. We show that the transient-effect ring oscillators (TERO) of appropriate length are very sensitive even to small modifications of the monitored circuit and can be a viable alternative to detection based on conventional ring oscillators. Finally, we discuss an outlook to the future of hardware Trojan defenses.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   79.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD   99.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD   139.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    Herein, we will use the terms “Trojan” and “hardware Trojan” as synonyms for this term.

  2. 2.

    https://www.trust-hub.org/resources/benchmarks.

  3. 3.

    http://stat.fsu.edu/pub/diehard.

  4. 4.

    http://www.fourmilab.ch/random/.

  5. 5.

    An early version of this work was presented and discussed in TRUDEVICE 2015, a workshop collocated with DATE 2015, in Grenoble, France on March 2015.

  6. 6.

    An early version of this work was presented and discussed in TRUDEVICE 2015, a workshop collocated with DATE 2015, in Grenoble, France on March 2015.

References

  1. Adee S. The hunt for the kill switch. IEEE Spectrum. 2008;45(5):34–9.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Banga M, Hsiao MS. A novel sustained vector technique for the detection of hardware Trojans. In: 2009 22nd international conference on VLSI design. IEEE; 2009. p. 327–32.

    Google Scholar 

  3. Banga M, Hsiao MS. VITAMIN: voltage inversion technique to ascertain malicious insertions in ICs. In: HOST’09, IEEE international workshop on hardware-oriented security and trust, 2009. IEEE; 2009. p. 104–7.

    Google Scholar 

  4. Bloom G, Narahari B, Simha R, Zambreno J. Providing secure execution environments with a last line of defense against Trojan circuit attacks. Comput Secur. 2009;28(7):660–9.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Böhl E, Ihle M. A fault attack robust TRNG. In: 2012 IEEE 18th international on-line testing symposium (IOLTS). IEEE; 2012. p. 114–7.

    Google Scholar 

  6. Bossuet L, Ngo XT, Cherif Z, Fischer V. A PUF based on a transient effect ring oscillator and insensitive to locking phenomenon. IEEE Trans Emer Top Comput. 2014;2(1):30–6.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Cherkaoui A, Fischer V, Fesquet L, Aubert A: A very high speed true random number generator with entropy assessment. In: Cryptographic hardware and embedded systems-CHES 2013. Springer; 2013. p. 179–96.

    Google Scholar 

  8. Clark J, Leblanc S, Knight S. Hardware Trojan horse device based on unintended USB channels. In: NSS’09, third international conference on network and system security, 2009. IEEE; 2009. p. 1–8.

    Google Scholar 

  9. Clark J, Leblanc S, Knight S. Compromise through USB-based hardware Trojan horse device. Future Gener Comput Syst. 2011;27(5):555–63.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Clark J, Leblanc S, Knight S. Risks associated with USB hardware Trojan devices used by insiders. In: 2011 IEEE international systems conference (SysCon). IEEE; 2011. p. 201–8.

    Google Scholar 

  11. Dabrowski A, Hobel H, Ullrich J, Krombholz K, Weippl E: Towards a hardware Trojan detection cycle. In: 2014 ninth international conference on availability, reliability and security (ARES); 2014. p. 287–94.

    Google Scholar 

  12. Fischer V, Lubicz D. Embedded evaluation of randomness in oscillator based elementary TRNG. In: Cryptographic hardware and embedded systems-CHES 2014. Springer; 2014. p. 527–43.

    Google Scholar 

  13. Jin Y. Introduction to hardware security. Electronics. 2015;4(4):763–84.

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  14. Jin Y, Makris Y. Hardware Trojans in wireless cryptographic ICs. IEEE Des Test Comput. 2010;27(1):26–35.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. King ST, Tucek J, Cozzie A, Grier C, Jiang W, Zhou Y. Designing and implementing malicious hardware. LEET. 2008;8:1–8.

    Google Scholar 

  16. Kitsos P, Simos D, Torres-Jimenez J, Voyiatzis A. Exciting FPGA cryptographic Trojans using combinatorial testing. In: 26th IEEE international symposium on software reliability engineering (ISSRE 2015), IEEE CPS (2015). Gaithersburg, MD, USA, November 2–5, 2015. p. 69–76.

    Google Scholar 

  17. Kitsos P, Voyiatzis A. FPGA Trojan detection using length-optimized ring oscillators. In: 17th EUROMICRO conference on digital system design (DSD 2014). Verona, Italy: IEEE CPS; 2014.

    Google Scholar 

  18. Kitsos P, Voyiatzis A. Towards a hardware Trojan detection methodology. In: 2nd EUROMICRO/IEEE workshop on embedded and cyber-physical systems (ECYPS 2014). Budva, Montenegro; 2014.

    Google Scholar 

  19. Kitsos P, Voyiatzis A. A comparison of TERO and RO timing sensitivity for hardware Trojan detection applications. In: 18th EUROMICRO conference on digital system design (DSD 2015). Madeira, Portugal: IEEE CPS; 2015.

    Google Scholar 

  20. Lee W, Rotoloni B: Emerging cyber threats report 2013. Georgia Tech Cyber Secur Summit. 2012.

    Google Scholar 

  21. Lin L, Kasper M, Güneysu T, Paar C, Burleson W. Trojan side-channels: lightweight hardware Trojans through side-channel engineering. In: Cryptographic hardware and embedded systems-CHES 2009. Springer; 2009. p. 382–95.

    Google Scholar 

  22. Lindorfer M, Kolbitsch C, Comparetti PM. Detecting environment-sensitive malware. In: Recent advances in intrusion detection. Springer; 2011. p. 338–57.

    Google Scholar 

  23. Markettos AT, Moore SW. The frequency injection attack on ring-oscillator-based true random number generators. In: Cryptographic hardware and embedded systems-CHES 2009. Springer; 2009. p. 317–31.

    Google Scholar 

  24. Rad RM, Wang X, Tehranipoor M, Plusquellic J. Power supply signal calibration techniques for improving detection resolution to hardware Trojans. In: Proceedings of the 2008 IEEE/ACM international conference on computer-aided design. IEEE Press; 2008. p. 632–9.

    Google Scholar 

  25. Rai D, Lach J. Performance of delay-based Trojan detection techniques under parameter variations. In: HOST’09, IEEE international workshop on hardware-oriented security and trust, 2009. IEEE; 2009. p. 58–65.

    Google Scholar 

  26. Ray S, Yang J, Basak A, Bhunia S. Correctness and security at odds: post-silicon validation of modern SoC designs. In: Proceedings of the 52nd annual design automation conference, DAC ’15. New York, NY, USA: ACM; 2015. p. 146:1–146:6.

    Google Scholar 

  27. Rogers M, Ruppersberger CD. Investigative report on the US national security issues posed by Chinese telecommunications companies Huawei and ZTE: a report. US house of representatives; 2012.

    Google Scholar 

  28. Rukhin A, Soto J, Nechvatal J, Smid M, Barker E. A statistical test suite for random and pseudorandom number generators for cryptographic applications. DTIC document: Tech. rep; 2001.

    Google Scholar 

  29. Salmani H, Tehranipoor M, Plusquellic J. A novel technique for improving hardware Trojan detection and reducing Trojan activation time. IEEE Trans Very Large Scale Integr VLSI Syst. 2012;20(1):112–25.

    Google Scholar 

  30. Schindler W, Killmann W. Evaluation criteria for true (physical) random number generators used in cryptographic applications. In: Cryptographic hardware and embedded systems-CHES 2002. Springer; 2003. p. 431–49.

    Google Scholar 

  31. Sreedhar A, Kundu S, Koren I. On reliability Trojan injection and detection. J Low Power Electron. 2012;8(5):674–83.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  32. UEA2&UIA I. Specification of the 3GPP confidentiality and integrity algorithms UEA2 & UIA2. Document 2: SNOW 3G specifications. Version: 1.1. ETSI; 2006.

    Google Scholar 

  33. Varchola M, Drutarovsky M. New high entropy element for FPGA based true random number generators. In: Cryptographic hardware and embedded systems, CHES 2010. Springer; 2010. p. 351–65.

    Google Scholar 

  34. Vidas T, Christin N. Evading android runtime analysis via sandbox detection. In: Proceedings of the 9th ACM symposium on information, computer and communications security. ACM; 2014. p. 447–58.

    Google Scholar 

  35. Wang X, Tehranipoor M, Plusquellic J. Detecting malicious inclusions in secure hardware: challenges and solutions. In: HOST 2008, IEEE international workshop on hardware-oriented security and trust, 2008. IEEE; 2008. p. 15–9.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

This work was supported in part by the EU COST Action IC1204 Trustworthy Manufacturing and Utilization of Secure Devices (TRUDEVICE), the GSRT Action “KRIPIS” with national (Greece) and EU funds, in the context of the research project “ISRTDI” while P. Kitsos and A.G. Voyiatzis were with the Industrial Systems Institute of the “Athena” Research and Innovation Center in ICT and Knowledge Technologies, and the COMET K1 program by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG), while A.G. Voyiatzis was with SBA Research.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Computer and Informatics Engineering Department, TEI of Western Greece, Antirio, Greece

    Paris Kitsos

  2. Computer Engineering and Informatics Department, University of Patras, Patras, Greece

    Nicolas Sklavos

  3. SBA Research, Vienna, Austria

    Artemios G. Voyiatzis

Authors
  1. Paris Kitsos
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Nicolas Sklavos
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Artemios G. Voyiatzis
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Paris Kitsos .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Computer & Informatics Engineering Department, Technological Educational Institute of Western Greece, Antirrio, Greece

    Nicolas Sklavos

  2. INESC-ID, IST, University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal

    Ricardo Chaves

  3. UMR 5506 - CC 477, LIRMM - CNRS / University of Montpellier, Montpellier, France

    Giorgio Di Natale

  4. ALaRI Institute, University of Lugano, Lugano, Switzerland

    Francesco Regazzoni

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2017 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Kitsos, P., Sklavos, N., Voyiatzis, A.G. (2017). Ring Oscillators and Hardware Trojan Detection. In: Sklavos, N., Chaves, R., Di Natale, G., Regazzoni, F. (eds) Hardware Security and Trust. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44318-8_9

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44318-8_9

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-44316-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-44318-8

  • eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation