Hardware touch of the month june month post

HARDWARE TROJAN

Hello Readers! Welcome to the Geek’s Dorm, this month’s “Hardware Touch of the month” post is about Hardware Trojans. Like a Software Trojan (Virus) it is also malicious and cause damage to the device. Wonder what hardware Trojan is? Simple, it is nothing but a malicious connection on an IC (Integrated circuit).

        Actually what does it do?It is similar to a Software Trojan. Trojan try to pass or destroy the security of the system in which it is used ie., the IC. It may leak the confidential file through radio emission, also it may disable the entire chip and its components.

        How can we identify it? It can be identify them by its physical characteristics, actions and activation phase.

Physical characteristics:

                Hardware Trojans can be identified by its type. Basically Hardware Trojans are of two types:

·       Parametric                             

·       Functional                             

        What do I mean by parametric type? This type of Trojans changes the components of the circuits either explicitly or implicitly. For an example, weakening of gates voltage, reducing the reliability through Focusing Ion Beam etc.,

What do I mean by Functional type? This type of Trojans deletes the contents of a transistors and gates in a circuit.

Methods of activation:

        Now we have discussed about the Trojans outfit (physical appearance).Let us know about how they are activated?  Generally a Trojan is activated using sensors, Logical states (A circuit may change from one state to others which is called transitions), Timer count value.

Threats of Trojans:

        After a Brief explanation about their Physical appearance and activation methods, we are going to learn what they do?Trojans change the way that IC works, it modifies the parameters related to IC also as I said earlier they can also leak the confidential keys using the Focused Ion Beams (FIB).

How they are detected?

        There are various detection methods to detect the Trojans during their insertion (during fabrication) and also during the working condition. The ways are as follows:

·       Physical inspection

·       Functional Tests

·       Built-in Test (Built in self-test and Design for test using checksum and Scanning techniques)

·       Side channel analysis

Here it ends, the “Hardware touch of the month” post.Hope it is helpful please feel free to comment on the error and writing style of the post I will really try to avoid those errors in the future.

I learned about hardware Trojans when reading something in Wikipedia so shared with you and as usual thanks! For spending your leisure time reading my post. Stay tuned for more post till then its bye from a Geek like you Bye! Happy learning!