Circumventing a Ring Oscillator Approach to FPGA-Based Hardware Trojan Detection

Ring oscillators are commonly used as a locking mechanism that binds a hardware design to a specific area of silicon within an integrated circuit (IC). This locking mechanism can be used to detect malicious modifications to the hardware design, also known as a hardware Trojan, in situations where such modifications result in a change to the physical placement of the design on the IC. However, careful consideration is needed when designing ring oscillators for such a scenario to guarantee the integrity of the locking mechanism. This paper presents a case study in which flaws discovered in a ring oscillator-based Trojan detection scheme allowed for the circumvention of the security mechanism and the implementation of a large and diverse set of hardware Trojans, limited only by hardware resources.