Circuit Vulnerabilities to Hardware Trojans at the Register-Transfer Level

Realized by modifying design implementation, hardware Trojans can interfere with any step of the design process. A hardware Trojan may undermine a system’s confidentiality by leaking secret information or can abrogate system availability by performing a malfunction. Soft third-party intellectual properties (IPs) are extensively used in high-level implementation, and they are highly vulnerable to hardware Trojan insertion. Therefore, there is a need for systematic approaches to assess vulnerabilities of a circuit to hardware Trojan insertion and to identify potential hardware Trojan locations at the register-transfer level.