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Introduction to Hardware Trojans

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The Hardware Trojan War

Abstract

Hardware Trojans are a major concern to the overall security and trust of any electronic system. These malicious modifications of circuits are designed to wreak havoc by altering the intended behavior of the system. When triggered, Trojans adversely affect electronics leading to reduced reliability, system failure, remote access into hardware, sensitive information leakage, and damage to a company’s reputation. Hardware Trojans are specifically designed to be rarely activated and undetectable to conventional testing practices and verification methodologies. Trojans can be hidden in many electronic components of integrated circuits (IC), field-programmable gate arrays (FPGA), system-on-chips (SoC), application-specific integrated circuits (ASIC), and third-party intellectual property (3PIP). They can be inserted by adversarial entities including untrusted foundries, designers, vendors, as well as electronic design automation (EDA) and computer-aided design (CAD) software tool suites. The emergence of hardware Trojans has discredited the common argument that hardware is always safe and trustworthy. This chapter provides a detailed insight into hardware Trojans including models, triggers, payloads, attacks, countermeasures, as well as the need to incorporate security through the entire hardware design flow and life cycle of ICs within the global supply chain.

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Vosatka, J. (2018). Introduction to Hardware Trojans. In: Bhunia, S., Tehranipoor, M. (eds) The Hardware Trojan War. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68511-3_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68511-3_2

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