Salutary hardware design to fight against integrated circuit counterfeiting and theft – SALWARE

We propose to control theft, illegal copying, cloning and counterfeiting of IC and IP by designing a salutary hardware (salware). The new term salware is the opposite of the widely used term malware (malicious hardware), but uses the same techniques, strategies and means

A new architecture of PUF, the TERO-PUF. It be able to provide UF and TRNG services both.
A new watermarking verification scheme based on side channel analysis (power consompuion and electromagnetic emanation)

Industrial benefits, economic benefits and social benefits of the SALWARE project are numerous and strategic. Indeed, the consequences of IC counterfeiting and theft are very important. For Fabless semiconductor industries this represents a loss of markets and potential damage to the brand. At the social level this translates directly into a reduction of economic activity and the impact on working. Finally, systems are face to a deterioration of security and reduced reliability. To conclude, SALWARE project addresses real and vital problems and will generate tangible industrial applications.

C. Marchand, L. Bossuet, E. Jung «IP Watermark Verification Based on Power Consumption Analysis«. In proceedings of the 27th IEEE International Systems-on-Chip Conference, SOCC 2014, Las vegas, USA, September 2014.

L. Bossuet «The Fight against Theft, Cloning and Counterfeiting of Integrated Circuits«. TRUDEVICE Summer and Training School, Lisbon, Portugual, Jully 2014.

C. Marchand, L. Bossuet«IP Watermark Verification Based on Power Consumption Analysis«. In International CrytpArchi Workshop 2014, Annecy, France, June 2014

A. Cherkaoui, L. Bossuet, L. Seitz, G. Selander and R. Borgainkar «New Paradigms for Access Control in Constrained Environments«. In proceedings of the IEEE International Symposium on reconfigurable Communication-Centric Systems-on-Chip, ReCoSoc 2014, Montpellier, France, Mai 2014.

L. Bossuet «SALWARE - Salutary Hardware to Design Trusted IC«. Ecole d'hiver francophone sur les technologies de conception des systèmes embarqués hétérogènes, FETCH 2014, Ottawa, Canada, January 2014. slides

L. Bossuet, X. T. Ngo, Z. Cherif, and V. Fischer «A PUF Based on transient Effect Ring Oscillator and Insensitive to Locking Phenomenon«. In IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computing, 2013.

L. Bossuet, and D. Hely «SALWARE: Salutary Hardware to Design Trusted IC«. In Workshop on Trustworthy Manufacturing and Utilization of Secure Devices, TRUDEVICE 2013, France, 30-31 Mai 2013.

L. Bossuet «Lutte contre le vol, la copie illégale, le reverse-engineering et la contrefaçon de circuits intégrés«. Jounrée sécurité numérique du GDR SoC-SiP, Paris, France, November 2012.

Fabless semiconductor industries are facing to the rise of design costs of integrated circuits. This rise is link to the technology change and the complexity increase. It follows that integrated circuits have become targets of counterfeiting and theft. The SALWARE project aims to study (theoretically and experimentally) salutary hardware design in order to fight against theft, illegal cloning and counterfeiting of integrated circuits. Salutary hardware means an embedded hardware system, hardly detectable / circumvented, inserted in an integrated circuit or a virtual component (Intellectual Property) used to provide intellectual property information (eg watermarking or hardware license) and / or to remotely activate the circuit or IP after manufacture and during use.

SALWARE project targets three objectives. The first is the study, design and characterization of a dual structure delivering PUF and TRNG services. Both services allow strong security of cryptographic protocol that guarantees the secure remote activation of the integrated circuit. Indeed, the PUF makes unique the activation key for each circuit. The TRNG makes unique the activation key for each activation (of the same circuit). Thus the system is protected from the following attacks: man-in-middle, replay, modeling (for PUF).

The second objective is to propose a cryptographic protocol taking advantage of the dual structure of PUF-TRNG to increase security of the IC activation system compared to those available in the literature. A hardware implementation of a low-cost cryptographic unit will be conducted during the project in order to support this protocol. Associated with this unit, a system able to activate a specific hardware features (digital and analog) will be proposed.

The last objective is the design of a system for transmitting information related to the intellectual property of an integrated circuit by using an electromagnetic channel. Such channel allows analysis without contact with a small hardware cost.

Industrial benefits, economic benefits and social benefits of the SALWARE project are numerous and strategic. Indeed, the consequences of IC counterfeiting and theft are very important. For Fabless semiconductor industries this represents a loss of markets and potential damage to the brand. At the social level this translates directly into a reduction of economic activity and the impact on working. Finally, systems are face to a deterioration of security and reduced reliability. To conclude, SALWARE project addresses real and vital problems and will generate tangible industrial applications.

This project, led by a young experienced researcher relies on different skills initiated and developed in recent years by the Hubert Curien Laboratory. It clearly aims to open a new topic of research in this laboratory focused on the protection of intellectual property of the fabless semiconductor industries. It aims to place Hubert Curien Laboratory as a European and International leader in this field.