Physical Inspection Attacks: New Frontier in Hardware Security

摘要

Due to globalization, the semiconductor industry is becoming more susceptible to trust and security issues. Hardware Trojans, i.e., malicious modification to integrated circuits (ICs), can violate the root of trust when the devices are fabricated in untrusted facilities. Literature shows as the microscopy and failure analysis tools excel in the resolution and capability, physical inspection methods like reverse engineering and photonic emission become attractive in helping verify such trust issues. On the contrary, such physical inspection methods are opening new capabilities for an adversary to extract sensitive information like secret keys, memory content or intellectual property (IP) from the chip compromising confidentiality and integrity. Different countermeasures have been proposed, however, there are still many unanswered questions. In this paper, we discuss physical inspection/attack methods using failure analysis tools and analyze the existing countermeasures and security/trust issues related to them. Next, we will introduce challenges related to the development of new countermeasures and trust verification. Finally, we present research roadmap for this emerging field.