Cyber Defense eMagazine July 2021 Edition

Hardware Trojan Detection
By Sylvain Guilley, General Manager and CTO at Secure-IC
Hardware Trojan attacks have become more concerning in recent years due to a series of serious events
in the electronics industry supply chain around the world because of them, such as data theft and
backdoor insertions. These attacks are based on the concealment and subsequent exploitation of
malicious hardware in integrated circuits and thus have been nicknamed “Trojan Horses”. These
malicious attacks can have several purposes such as sabotaging the infrastructures used by the circuits
or eavesdropping on confidential communications.
The ability to detect and deal with Trojan Horses has become vital for organizations charged with
protecting key infrastructure, government and assets. On a business level, today’s applications can be
critical and security is paramount in many industries such as automotive or avionics; it is important to
screen and check unreliable chips.
A Trojan Horse is often defined as malware disguised as legitimate software. Nowadays, we are talking
about Hardware Trojan Horses that have proven to be very dangerous and have the ability to maliciously
modify integrated chips.
Classification of Trojans and the means to detect them
There are many types of Trojans, and they can be inserted pretty much everywhere in the microchip.
This is what makes them so difficult to locate, as one could well be located in the chip’s processor while
another crouches in the chip’s power supply.
The stealthiest Hardware Trojans are virtually undetectable because they do not appear in the bill of
materials (BoM). They are implanted in the chip itself and therefore must be investigated at the silicon-
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