# Security Protection for Magnetic Tunnel Junction

## TL;DR

This paper proposes a built-in-self-test architecture for magnetic tunnel junctions to ensure security and correct functioning against malicious process variations, using a novel identification technique based on circuit current signals.

## Contribution

It introduces a new security testing architecture for MTJ devices and a general identification method to detect abnormal behaviors via circuit current analysis.

## Key findings

- Effective detection of malicious process variations in MTJ devices.
- Successful implementation of the self-test architecture for security verification.
- Identification technique accurately finds abnormal circuit behaviors.

## Abstract

Energy efficiency is one of the most important parameters for designing and building a computing system nowadays. Introduction of new transistor and memory technologies to the integrated circuits design have brought hope for low energy very large scale integration (VLSI) circuit design. This excellency is pleasant if the computing system is secure and the energy is not wasted through execution of malicious actions. In fact, it is required to make sure that the utilized transistor and memory devices function correctly and no error occurs in the system operation. In this regard, we propose a built-in-self-test architecture for security checking of the magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ) device under malicious process variations attack. Also, a general identification technique is presented to investigate the behaviour and activities of the employed circuitries within this MTJ testing architecture. The presented identification technique tries to find any abnormal behaviour using the circuit current signal.