Triggered Hardware Trojan Detection in IP Cores for Ensuring Safety in Cyber Physical Systems
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Cyber physical systems (CPSs) increasingly depend on complex hardware IP cores to perform critical functions. However, triggered hardware Trojans’ stealthy, malicious modifications activated under rare conditions pose significant threats to the safety and reliability of these systems. This research paper introduces a novel detection framework that integrates multi-modal side-channel analysis with trigger-aware machine learning to identify Trojans embedded within IP cores. A lightweight runtime monitoring mechanism enables real-time Trojan detection while adhering to the stringent safety constraints of CPSs. To further strengthen resilience, cryptographic integrity verification and dynamic mitigation through partial reconfiguration are incorporated. Experimental validation on two representative IP cores, AES-128 and RS232, demonstrates the framework’s effectiveness by achieving high detection accuracy (over 96%) with minimal hardware overhead (<3% LUT utilization) and latency increase of 4.95%. It can also be seen that our trigger-aware methodology more than doubles the toggling probability of rare Trojan trigger nets compared to conventional approaches. Furthermore, results from FPGA prototypes and standard Trojan benchmarks confirm the effectiveness of the proposed framework, and the proposed approach achieves high detection accuracy with minimal resource and performance penalties. This work advances the state of the art in securing CPS hardware against Trojan-based attacks.
Source: Chips
DOI: 10.3390/chips4040047
Authors: Mahfuzur Rahman Talukder, Md. Eftekhar Alam, Abu Monsur Mohammah Fahim, Fakir Sharif Hossain
Language: English
Subfield: Hardware and Architecture
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $1,207
OpenAlex ID: W4416133363