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A Combined Logical and Physical Attack on Logic Obfuscation

Authors:

Isaac McDaniel,

Ankur SrivastavaAuthors Info & Claims

ICCAD '22: Proceedings of the 41st IEEE/ACM International Conference on Computer-Aided Design

Article No.: 68, Pages 1 - 9

https://doi.org/10.1145/3508352.3549349

Published: 22 December 2022 Publication History

Abstract

Logic obfuscation protects integrated circuits from an untrusted foundry attacker during manufacturing. To counter obfuscation, a number of logical (e.g. Boolean satisfiability) and physical (e.g. electro-optical probing) attacks have been proposed. By definition, these attacks use only a subset of the information leaked by a circuit to unlock it. Countermeasures often exploit the resulting blind-spots to thwart these attacks, limiting their scalability and generalizability. To overcome this, we propose a combined logical and physical attack against obfuscation called the CLAP attack. The CLAP attack leverages both the logical and physical properties of a locked circuit to prune the keyspace in a unified and theoretically-rigorous fashion, resulting in a more versatile and potent attack. To formulate the physical portion of the CLAP attack, we derive a logical formulation that provably identifies input sequences capable of sensitizing logically expressive regions in a circuit. We prove that electro-optically probing these regions infers portions of the key. For the logical portion of the attack, we integrate the physical attack results into a Boolean satisfiability attack to find the correct key. We evaluate the CLAP attack by launching it against four obfuscation schemes in benchmark circuits. The physical portion of the attack fully specified 60.6% of key bits and partially specified another 10.3%. The logical portion of the attack found the correct key in the physical-attack-limited keyspace in under 30 minutes. Thus, the CLAP attack unlocked each circuit despite obfuscation.

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Cited By

Wojtal TPaul RZuzak M(2025)Mitigating Electro-Optical Frequency Mapping Attacks on Logic-Locked Integrated CircuitsJournal of Hardware and Systems Security10.1007/s41635-025-00158-wOnline publication date: 29-Jan-2025
https://doi.org/10.1007/s41635-025-00158-w
Zamiri Azar KMardani Kamali HFarahmandi FTehranipoor MZamiri Azar KMardani Kamali HFarahmandi FTehranipoor M(2023)Emergence of Cutting-Edge Technologies on Logic LockingUnderstanding Logic Locking10.1007/978-3-031-37989-5_10(251-277)Online publication date: 23-Sep-2023
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37989-5_10
Bhunia SDas AFazzari SKammler VKehlet DRajendran JSrivastava AMitra TYoung EXiong J(2022)Hardware IP Protection against Confidentiality Attacks and Evolving Role of CAD ToolProceedings of the 41st IEEE/ACM International Conference on Computer-Aided Design10.1145/3508352.3561103(1-8)Online publication date: 30-Oct-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3508352.3561103

Index Terms

A Combined Logical and Physical Attack on Logic Obfuscation
1. Hardware
  1. Very large scale integration design
2. Security and privacy
  1. Security in hardware

Index terms have been assigned to the content through auto-classification.

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cover image ACM Conferences

ICCAD '22: Proceedings of the 41st IEEE/ACM International Conference on Computer-Aided Design

October 2022

1467 pages

ISBN:9781450392174

DOI:10.1145/3508352

Conference Chair:
Tulika Mitra
National University of Singapore
,
Program Chairs:
Evangeline Young
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
,
Jinjun Xiong
University at Buffalo (UB)

Copyright © 2022 ACM.

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New York, NY, United States

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Published: 22 December 2022

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ICCAD '22: IEEE/ACM International Conference on Computer-Aided Design

October 30 - November 3, 2022

California, San Diego

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Cited By

Wojtal TPaul RZuzak M(2025)Mitigating Electro-Optical Frequency Mapping Attacks on Logic-Locked Integrated CircuitsJournal of Hardware and Systems Security10.1007/s41635-025-00158-wOnline publication date: 29-Jan-2025
https://doi.org/10.1007/s41635-025-00158-w
Zamiri Azar KMardani Kamali HFarahmandi FTehranipoor MZamiri Azar KMardani Kamali HFarahmandi FTehranipoor M(2023)Emergence of Cutting-Edge Technologies on Logic LockingUnderstanding Logic Locking10.1007/978-3-031-37989-5_10(251-277)Online publication date: 23-Sep-2023
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37989-5_10
Bhunia SDas AFazzari SKammler VKehlet DRajendran JSrivastava AMitra TYoung EXiong J(2022)Hardware IP Protection against Confidentiality Attacks and Evolving Role of CAD ToolProceedings of the 41st IEEE/ACM International Conference on Computer-Aided Design10.1145/3508352.3561103(1-8)Online publication date: 30-Oct-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3508352.3561103

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