The need for declarative properties in digital IC security

We emphasize the need to articulate precise, declarative properties in the context of securing Digital ICs. We do this by discussing two pieces of our work on securing Digital ICs. In one, we discuss a seemingly compelling approach to protecting Intellectual Property | IC camouaging. We demonstrate that an adversary can carry out a decamouaging attack, in practice, much more efficiently than previously thought. Underlying our attack is strong foundations: an identification of the computational-complexity of the problems an attacker faces, and how they can be addressed using off-the-shelf constraint solvers. We identify the lack of a precise characterization of 'security' in this context as an issue. In the other piece of work, we present an example of the articulation of such a security property for 3D IC technology, in the context of securing a supply-chain. The property is articulated declaratively, with explicit assumptions that underlie the threat model.