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Title: Test generation using reinforcement learning for delay-based side-channel analysis
Reliability and trustworthiness are dominant factors in designing System-on-Chips (SoCs) for a variety of applications. Malicious implants, such as hardware Trojans, can lead to undesired information leakage or system malfunction. To ensure trustworthy computing, it is critical to develop efficient Trojan detection techniques. While existing delay-based side-channel analysis is promising, it is not effective due to two fundamental limitations: (i) The difference in path delay between the golden design and Trojan inserted design is negligible compared with environmental noise and process variations. (ii) Existing approaches rely on manually crafted rules for test generation, and require a large number of simulations, making it impractical for industrial designs. In this paper, we propose a novel test generation method using reinforcement learning for delay-based Trojan detection. This paper makes three important contributions. 1) Unlike existing methods that rely on the delay difference of a few gates, our proposed approach utilizes critical path analysis to generate test vectors that can maximize the side-channel sensitivity. 2) To the best of our knowledge, our approach is the first attempt in applying reinforcement learning for efficient test generation to detect Trojans using delay-based analysis. 3) Our experimental results demonstrate that our method can significantly improve both side-channel sensitivity (59% on average) and test generation time (17x on average) compared to state-of-the-art test generation techniques.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1908131
NSF-PAR ID:
10286388
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
International Conference on Computer-Aided Design (ICCAD)
Page Range / eLocation ID:
1 to 7
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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Using the offline decoder and postprocessor, the model performed at 36.23% sensitivity with 9.52 FAs per 24 hours. The trained model was then evaluated with the online modules. The current performance of the overall online system is 45.80% sensitivity with 28.14 FAs per 24 hours. Table 2 summarizes the performances of these systems. The performance of the online system deviates from the offline P1 model because the online postprocessor fails to combine the events as the seizure probability fluctuates during an event. The modules in the online system add a total of 11.1 seconds of delay for processing each second of the data, as shown in Figure 3. In practice, we also count the time for loading the model and starting the visualizer block. When we consider these facts, the system consumes 15 seconds to display the first hypothesis. The system detects seizure onsets with an average latency of 15 seconds. Implementing an automatic seizure detection model in real time is not trivial. We used a variety of techniques such as the file locking mechanism, multithreading, circular buffers, real-time event decoding, and signal-decision plotting to realize the system. A video demonstrating the system is available at: https://www.isip.piconepress.com/projects/nsf_pfi_tt/resources/videos/realtime_eeg_analysis/v2.5.1/video_2.5.1.mp4. The final conference submission will include a more detailed analysis of the online performance of each module. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Research reported in this publication was most recently supported by the National Science Foundation Partnership for Innovation award number IIP-1827565 and the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Universal Research Enhancement Program (PA CURE). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official views of any of these organizations. REFERENCES [1] A. Craik, Y. He, and J. L. 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