An improved AES Hardware Trojan benchmark to validate Trojan detection schemes in an ASIC design flow

The semiconductor design industry has globalized and it is economical for the chip makers to get services from the different geographies in design, manufacturing and testing. Globalization raises the question of trust in an integrated circuit. It is for the every chip maker to ensure there is no malicious inclusion in the design, which is referred as Hardware Trojans. Malicious inclusion can occur by an in-house adversary design engineer, Intellectual Property (IP) core supplied from the third party vendor or at untrusted manufacturing foundry. Several researchers have proposed hardware Trojan detection schemes in the recent years. Trust-Hub provides Trojan benchmark circuits to verify the strength of the Trojan detection techniques. In this work, our focus is on Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) Trojan benchmarks, which is most vulnerable block cipher for Trojan attacks. All 21 Benchmarks available in Trusthub are analyzed against standard coverage driven verification practices, synthesis, DFT insertion and ATPG simulations. The analysis reveals that 19 AES benchmarks are weak and Trojan inclusion can be detected using standard procedures used in ASIC design flow. Based on the weakness observed design modification is proposed to improve the quality of Trojan benchmarks. The strength of proposed Trojan benchmarks is better than existing circuits and their original features are also preserved after design modification.