690
7 Countermeasures Against Hardware Trojans
microelectronic systems by creating such architectures of these systems that either
completely prevent activation of such Trojans or simply eliminate their effects during
activation in order to prevent catastrophic damage of the system.
In order to achieve this difficult goal, it was suggested in [90] to execute unproven
third-party IP and ready-made commercial components (COTS) in so-called sandboxes using special verification instruments and a number of special virtual resources.
While standard verification tools are used here only to detect the facts of activation of
hardware Trojans during SoC functioning and in order to solve the problem of protection from a possible catastrophic damage of the system, virtual resources are provided
to the IP in a special sandbox, thus preventing intruders from directly accessing physical resources of the system. This approach was implemented by the authors of [90]
with the help of the so-called trust-hub.com standards using the system operating
according to the scenario of field programmable gate array (FPGA). According to
the authors, experimental testing demonstrated that all these measures proved the
facts of detection of hardware Trojans and a complete solution to this problem. In
this case, resource costs increased insignificantly, while the performance remained
just as high.
As we know, in order to reduce the costs and the period from the beginning of
designing the system of chip to its emergence in the market, it is usually necessary to use third-party IP blocks (cores), often as component elements of the SoC
design. The recent situation is such (see Chap. 5) that design of IP blocks and production of integrated circuits are mostly performed by third-party potentially unreliable
companies scattered around the world. Such a hardware Trojan can actually be implemented in any IC during any stage of the design process [91, 92], including stages
of specification, topology design, verification, and production.
As we demonstrated in previous sections, the scientific society so far has paid more
attention to studying the processes of testing such Soc after their production based
on the side channel monitoring channels described above. However, the number of
such theoretical models required for activation of potential hidden Trojans is too
great for inspection of modern complex IP blocks and SoC which process multitudes
of input and output data and have numerous various internal conditions and used
memory blocks; this, in turn, significantly limits the effectiveness of such methods.
For example, known approaches like [93], which were suggested for monitoring of
behavior of signals and detection of a potential Trojans are based exclusively on
application of standard verification tools and do not relate to the field of application
of new identification methods.
In the work [94], the authors mentioned above suggested an innovative approach—
so-called hardware sandboxing aimed at solving the problem of protection from
Trojan introduction into SoC. This approach is based on the concept of sandbox,
which is known to information security specialists; this concept has been used in software development for many years and consists in including procedures and resources
required for identification of foreign components and unreliable parts of the code
in special isolated environments in order to prevent actions damaging the remaining
part of the digital system (outside the sandbox). Isolation of malicious IP blocks can
increase security of the system, simultaneously reducing the production costs and
7 Countermeasures Against Hardware Trojans
microelectronic systems by creating such architectures of these systems that either
completely prevent activation of such Trojans or simply eliminate their effects during
activation in order to prevent catastrophic damage of the system.
In order to achieve this difficult goal, it was suggested in [90] to execute unproven
third-party IP and ready-made commercial components (COTS) in so-called sandboxes using special verification instruments and a number of special virtual resources.
While standard verification tools are used here only to detect the facts of activation of
hardware Trojans during SoC functioning and in order to solve the problem of protection from a possible catastrophic damage of the system, virtual resources are provided
to the IP in a special sandbox, thus preventing intruders from directly accessing physical resources of the system. This approach was implemented by the authors of [90]
with the help of the so-called trust-hub.com standards using the system operating
according to the scenario of field programmable gate array (FPGA). According to
the authors, experimental testing demonstrated that all these measures proved the
facts of detection of hardware Trojans and a complete solution to this problem. In
this case, resource costs increased insignificantly, while the performance remained
just as high.
As we know, in order to reduce the costs and the period from the beginning of
designing the system of chip to its emergence in the market, it is usually necessary to use third-party IP blocks (cores), often as component elements of the SoC
design. The recent situation is such (see Chap. 5) that design of IP blocks and production of integrated circuits are mostly performed by third-party potentially unreliable
companies scattered around the world. Such a hardware Trojan can actually be implemented in any IC during any stage of the design process [91, 92], including stages
of specification, topology design, verification, and production.
As we demonstrated in previous sections, the scientific society so far has paid more
attention to studying the processes of testing such Soc after their production based
on the side channel monitoring channels described above. However, the number of
such theoretical models required for activation of potential hidden Trojans is too
great for inspection of modern complex IP blocks and SoC which process multitudes
of input and output data and have numerous various internal conditions and used
memory blocks; this, in turn, significantly limits the effectiveness of such methods.
For example, known approaches like [93], which were suggested for monitoring of
behavior of signals and detection of a potential Trojans are based exclusively on
application of standard verification tools and do not relate to the field of application
of new identification methods.
In the work [94], the authors mentioned above suggested an innovative approach—
so-called hardware sandboxing aimed at solving the problem of protection from
Trojan introduction into SoC. This approach is based on the concept of sandbox,
which is known to information security specialists; this concept has been used in software development for many years and consists in including procedures and resources
required for identification of foreign components and unreliable parts of the code
in special isolated environments in order to prevent actions damaging the remaining
part of the digital system (outside the sandbox). Isolation of malicious IP blocks can
increase security of the system, simultaneously reducing the production costs and