Work

ReverSim: An Open-Source Environment for the Controlled Study of Human Aspects in Hardware Reverse Engineering

Year: 2025

Type: conference-paper

Abstract: Hardware Reverse Engineering (HRE) is a technique for analyzing integrated circuits.Experts employ HRE for security-critical tasks, like detecting Trojans or intellectual property violations, relying not only on their experience and customized tools but also on their cognitive abilities.In this work, we introduce ReverSim, a software environment that models key HRE subprocesses and integrates standardized cognitive tests.ReverSim enables quantitative studies with easier-to-recruit non-experts to uncover cognitive factors relevant to HRE.We empirically evaluated ReverSim in three studies.Semi-structured interviews with 14 HRE professionals confirmed its comparability to real-world HRE processes.Two online user studies with 170 novices and intermediates revealed effective differentiation of participant performance across a spectrum of difficulties, and correlations between participants' cognitive processing speed and task performance.ReverSim is available as open-source software, providing a robust platform for controlled experiments to assess cognitive processes in HRE, potentially opening new avenues for hardware protection.

Source: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

DOI: 10.1145/3706598.3714160

Authors: Steffen Becker, René Walendy, Markus Weber, Carina Wiesen, Nikol Rummel, Christof Paar

Institutions: Max Planck Institute for Security and Privacy, Ruhr University Bochum

Language: English

Topic: Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) and Hardware Security

Subfield: Hardware and Architecture

Field: Computer Science

Domain: Physical Sciences

Open Access status: hybrid

Funder: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft

Award: EXC 2092: CyberSicherheit im Zeitalter großskaliger Angreifer (CASA)