Work

Assessing Runtime Electromagnetic Detection of CPU Hardware Trojans Targeting Kernel Memory

Year: 2026

Type: preprint

Abstract: Side-channels are a promising approach for hardware trojan detection, as they can passively reveal malicious hardware activity without requiring additional circuitry or destructive analysis of the device under test. This work investigates the use of electromagnetic (EM) emanations for runtime detection of hardware trojan attacks. Using an open-source hardware trojan that implements an arbitrary memory-write primitive, we tamper with the kernel memory of a Linux system running on a RISC-V microarchitecture and perform a real-time baseline detection using the processor's EM emissions. Our results indicate that, under certain conditions, hardware trojans can be detected indirectly through the anomalous software behavior they enable.

Source: arXiv (Cornell University)

DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2609.23186

Authors: Moschos, Athanasios, Yilmaz, Baki Berkay, Valakuzhy, Kevin, Keromytis, Angelos D.

Institutions: Georgia Institute of Technology, Wayne State University

Topic: Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) and Hardware Security

Subfield: Hardware and Architecture

Field: Computer Science

Domain: Physical Sciences

Open Access status: green

OpenAlex ID: W7214029202

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