A Novel Detection Method for Hardware Trojan in Third Party IP Cores

The detection theories and methods of Hardware Trojan (HT) in ASIC have been mature with the vigorous development of integrated circuit (IC) security. However, the detection theories and methods of hardware Trojan in third party IP cores develop slowly when IP cores are used widely, thereby it results severe secure problems during use of IP cores. In this paper, we analyzed structure features of less-toggled signals (LTS) of IP cores and trigger HTs in gate level circuits and proposed a novel detection method for HT in IP cores based on matching of LTS structure features. Experiment results demonstrated the efficiency of detection method for HT in IP cores, and it means we can make further guarantee for security of IP cores.