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arXiv · 1910.01517

Insights into the Mind of a Trojan Designer: The Challenge to Integrate a Trojan into the Bitstream

Maik Ender·Pawel Swierczynski·Sebastian Wallat·Matthias Wilhelm·Paul Martin Knopp·Christof Paar
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Abstract

The threat of inserting hardware Trojans during the design, production, or in-field poses a danger for integrated circuits in real-world applications. A particular critical case of hardware Trojans is the malicious manipulation of third-party FPGA configurations. In addition to attack vectors during the design process, FPGAs can be infiltrated in a non-invasive manner after shipment through alterations of the bitstream. First, we present an improved methodology for bitstream file format reversing. Second, we introduce a novel idea for Trojan insertion.

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Maik Ender, Pawel Swierczynski, Sebastian Wallat, Matthias Wilhelm, Paul Martin Knopp, Christof Paar. 2019-10-01. Insights into the Mind of a Trojan Designer: The Challenge to Integrate a Trojan into the Bitstream. https://doi.org/10.1145/3287624.3288742

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