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Active Hardware Metering by Finite State Machine Obfuscation

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Hardware Protection through Obfuscation

Abstract

This chapter presents a detailed description and comprehensive discussion of the first known method for active IC metering and IC piracy prevention which allow uniquely locking each manufactured IC at the foundry. The locking structure is embedded during hardware synthesis by FSM modifications such that the IC would not be functional without a proper chips specific passkey that can only be computed by the designer (IP rights owner). We show the analogy between the hardware synthesis transformations and program compilation, and pose the problem of extending the FSM for hiding the locks as an instance of the classic program obfuscation problem. We demonstrate a construction of the locks within FSM as an instance of a general output multi-point function family. This family is known to be effectively obfuscatable in the random oracle model. Therefore, the locks can be efficiently hidden. Finally, we show the low overhead and resistance to attacks of the suggested metering technique.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In cryptography, a random oracle is a mathematical abstraction used in proofs when no implementable function (except for an oracle) could provide the properties required.

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Acknowledgements

This work discussed in this article was in parts supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) grant No. W911NF-07-1-0198, Office of Naval Research (ONR) grant No. R16480, AFOSR-MURI grant on Nano-Hardware Security, and National Scient Foundation Trust-Hub. Dr. Golsa Ghiaasi-Hafezi, Dr. Azalia Mirhoseini, and Mr. Siam Hussain helped with reading and editing the chapter.

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  1. University of California, San Diego, California, USA

    Farinaz Koushanfar

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  1. Farinaz Koushanfar
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Correspondence to Farinaz Koushanfar .

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  1. University of Florida, Gainseville, Florida, USA

    Domenic Forte

  2. University of Florida, Gainseville, Florida, USA

    Swarup Bhunia

  3. University of Florida, Gainseville, Florida, USA

    Mark M. Tehranipoor

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Koushanfar, F. (2017). Active Hardware Metering by Finite State Machine Obfuscation. In: Forte, D., Bhunia, S., Tehranipoor, M. (eds) Hardware Protection through Obfuscation. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49019-9_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49019-9_7

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