On the Difficulty of Inserting Trojans in Reversible Computing Architectures

TL;DR

This paper explores the security vulnerabilities of reversible computing architectures, specifically their susceptibility to hardware Trojans, and discusses detection challenges due to their unique bijective properties.

Contribution

It provides the first analysis of Trojan insertion difficulty in reversible circuits, highlighting unique security considerations compared to traditional CMOS-based designs.

Findings

Reversible circuits pose distinct challenges for Trojan detection.

Inherent properties of reversible circuits affect Trojan insertion and activation.

Security implications differ significantly from traditional CMOS circuits.

Abstract

Fabrication-less design houses outsource their designs to 3rd party foundries to lower fabrication cost. However, this creates opportunities for a rogue in the foundry to introduce hardware Trojans, which stay inactive most of the time and cause unintended consequences to the system when triggered. Hardware Trojans in traditional CMOS-based circuits have been studied and Design-for-Trust (DFT) techniques have been proposed to detect them. Different from traditional circuits in many ways, reversible circuits implement one-to-one, bijective input/output mappings. We will investigate the security implications of reversible circuits with a particular focus on susceptibility to hardware Trojans. We will consider inherently reversible circuits and non-reversible functions embedded in reversible circuits.