CAD-base: An attack vector into the electronics supply chain

Kanad Basu; Samah Mohamed Saeed; Christian Pilato; Mohammed Ashraf; Mohammed Thari Nabeel; Krishnendu Chakrabarty; Ramesh Karri

doi:10.1145/3315574

CAD-base: An attack vector into the electronics supply chain

Kanad Basu, Samah Mohamed Saeed, Christian Pilato, Mohammed Ashraf, Mohammed Thari Nabeel, Krishnendu Chakrabarty, Ramesh Karri

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

Fabless semiconductor companies design system-on-chips (SoC) by using third-party intellectual property (IP) cores and fabricate them in offshore, potentially untrustworthy foundries. Owing to the globally distributed electronics supply chain, security has emerged as a serious concern. In this article, we explore electronics computer-aided design (CAD) software as a threat vector that can be exploited to introduce vulnerabilities into the SoC. We show that all electronics CAD tools-high-level synthesis, logic synthesis, physical design, verification, test, and post-silicon validation-are potential threat vectors to different degrees. We have demonstrated CAD-based attacks on several benchmarks, including the commercial ARM Cortex M0 processor [1].

Original language	English (US)
Article number	38
Journal	ACM Transactions on Design Automation of Electronic Systems
Volume	24
Issue number	4
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1145/3315574
State	Published - 2019

Keywords

Computer-aided design
Electronic design automation
Hardware security

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Computer Science Applications
Computer Graphics and Computer-Aided Design
Electrical and Electronic Engineering

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10.1145/3315574

Cite this

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abstract = "Fabless semiconductor companies design system-on-chips (SoC) by using third-party intellectual property (IP) cores and fabricate them in offshore, potentially untrustworthy foundries. Owing to the globally distributed electronics supply chain, security has emerged as a serious concern. In this article, we explore electronics computer-aided design (CAD) software as a threat vector that can be exploited to introduce vulnerabilities into the SoC. We show that all electronics CAD tools-high-level synthesis, logic synthesis, physical design, verification, test, and post-silicon validation-are potential threat vectors to different degrees. We have demonstrated CAD-based attacks on several benchmarks, including the commercial ARM Cortex M0 processor [1].",

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AU - Basu, Kanad

AU - Saeed, Samah Mohamed

AU - Pilato, Christian

AU - Ashraf, Mohammed

AU - Nabeel, Mohammed Thari

AU - Chakrabarty, Krishnendu

AU - Karri, Ramesh

PY - 2019

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AB - Fabless semiconductor companies design system-on-chips (SoC) by using third-party intellectual property (IP) cores and fabricate them in offshore, potentially untrustworthy foundries. Owing to the globally distributed electronics supply chain, security has emerged as a serious concern. In this article, we explore electronics computer-aided design (CAD) software as a threat vector that can be exploited to introduce vulnerabilities into the SoC. We show that all electronics CAD tools-high-level synthesis, logic synthesis, physical design, verification, test, and post-silicon validation-are potential threat vectors to different degrees. We have demonstrated CAD-based attacks on several benchmarks, including the commercial ARM Cortex M0 processor [1].

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CAD-base: An attack vector into the electronics supply chain

Abstract

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

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