CA4TJ: Correlational Analysis for Always-On Information-Leakage Hardware Trojan Detecting

The presence of always-on hardware Trojans (HTs) capable of continuously leaking sensitive information poses a significant threat to security, particularly in circuits designed for sensitive information protection. These HTs are engineered to operate stealthily, making their detection a formidable challenge. While existing hardware Trojan detection methodologies often rely on the identification of rare triggering characteristics, they prove inadequate for effectively identifying always-on HTs. This paper presents a novel approach to detect such HTs, which persistently leak critical information within circuits designed for sensitive information protection. By analyzing the characteristics of always-on information-leakage HTs, we propose CA4TJ, a corresponding quantifying metric to evaluate the correlation between sensitive information and the leaked port within gate-level netlists. Distinguished from conventional methods, the proposed approach eliminates the need for a reference model, thereby enhancing its practicality in real-world applications. The efficacy of this method is validated through extensive evaluations conducted on benchmark circuits, including those with intricate designs comprising up to one hundred thousand gates.