Committee:

Dr. Alenka Zajic, ECE, Chair , Advisor

Dr. Milos Prvulovic, CoC, Co-Advisor

Dr. Raheem Beyah, ECE

Dr. Angelos Keromytis, ECE

Dr. Brendan Saltaformaggio, ECE

Dr. Hyesoon Kim, CoC

Abstract:

Integrated circuits (IC) have become an integral aspect of our lives, by controlling most of electronic devices ranging from cellphones and washing machines to airplanes and rockets. Thus, the problem of ensuring authenticity and trust for ICs is critically important, especially for sensitive fields such as military, finance, and governmental infrastructure.  This work introduces a new physical side-channel, which we call the backscattering side-channel, and propose novel hardware Trojan (HT) and counterfeit integrated circuit (IC) detection techniques that exploit the backscattering side channel. These techniques are capable of detecting different types of inactive HTs and counterfeit ICs on multiple circuit benchmarks while tolerating manufacturing variation.