Hardware Honeypot: Setting Sequential Reverse Engineering on a Wrong Track

arXiv:2305.03707v2 Announce Type: replace
Abstract: Reverse engineering (RE) of finite state machines (FSMs) is a serious threat when protecting designs against RE attacks. While most recent protection techniques rely on the security of a secret key, this work presents a new approach: hardware FSM honeypots. These honeypots lead the RE tools to a wrong but, for the tools, very attractive FSM, while making the original FSM less attractive. The results show that state-of-the-art RE methods favor the highly attractive honeypot …

arxiv attacks cs.cr engineering finite state hardware honeypot honeypots key machines protecting protection reverse reverse engineering secret secret key security serious state techniques threat track work wrong