Key-Based Functional Obfuscation of Integrated Circuits for a Hardware Security

A novel technique proposed in this paper for securing integrated circuits, IP cores known as mixed functional Obfuscation. The functional obfuscation is a type of countermeasure used to encrypt and protect circuits from adversary attacks and from illegitimate use during the IC fabrication process. The main goal is to obscure the hardware circuit functionality at a design house by modifying its design using encryption keys. This technique is obtained from current obfuscation methods termed as fixed, dynamic obfuscation. This method increases the level of obfuscation in terms of brute force attack time and reverse engineering attack time.