Netlist-based Measures for Hardware Obfuscation: A Preliminary Study

摘要

It is important to protect the intellectual properties of logic circuits from reverse engineering. One of the countermeasures is logic obfuscation, which complicates the internal structures of logic circuits to prevent reverse engineering. A few researches have been conducted to simplify logic obfuscation using software obfuscation tools and high-level synthesis. However, it is not quantitatively evident whether the generated circuits are more complex than plain circuits. This paper discusses the three metrics of obfuscated netlists to evaluate the obfuscation methods proposed in previous studies. We confirmed that the obfuscated circuits are actually more complex than the original circuits using the proposed metrics.