Title: Certificate-based encoding of gate level description for secure transmission

Authors: Sandip Ghosal; Debasis Mitra; Subhasis Bhattacharjee

Addresses: Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, India ' Department of Information Technology, National Institute of Technology, Durgapur, India ' Synopsys India Pvt. Ltd., Bangalore, India

Abstract: Modern system-on-chip design strongly depends on secure exchange of intellectual properties among various authorities. Since it involves large amount of data, the conventional message encryption techniques need improvised use. We propose a novel obfuscation technique for synthesised digital circuits that facilitates secure transmission. It does not need traditional cryptographic data encryption of the whole circuit, and thus requires significantly less time compared to RSA-based encryption. The encoding/decoding of the circuit is guided by a certificate generated specially for the circuit itself. The encoded description hides the functionality of the original circuit. The inbuilt integrity checking at the receiver enables in identifying any (intentional) modification. We propose two distinct approaches for certificate generation that allow a greater trade-off between the volume of data and the protection. Experimental results show that the proposed technique can withstand a variety of attacks from intruders.

Keywords: intellectual property protection; IPP; secure transmission; encryption; VLSI design; gate level description; certificate-based encoding; transmission security; cryptography; system-on-chip; SoC.

DOI: 10.1504/IJESDF.2015.067994

International Journal of Electronic Security and Digital Forensics, 2015 Vol.7 No.1, pp.54 - 75

Received: 27 Sep 2014
Accepted: 23 Oct 2014
Published online: 12 Mar 2015 *

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