Logic Encryption: This Time for Real
Rupesh Raj Karn, Lakshmi Likhitha Mankali, Zeng Wang, Saideep Sreekumar, Prithwish Basu Roy, Ozgur Sinanoglu, Lilas Alrahis, Johann Knechtel

TL;DR
This paper introduces a practical logic encryption scheme for circuit IP protection that encrypts circuit logic itself, outperforming prior methods against various attacks with lower overheads.
Contribution
It presents a novel, end-to-end logic encryption approach combining cryptography, randomization, and design techniques, improving security and efficiency over existing schemes.
Findings
Outperforms prior art against oracle-less attacks
Lower design overheads compared to existing methods
Provides an open-source implementation
Abstract
Modern circuits face various threats like reverse engineering, theft of intellectual property (IP), side-channel attacks, etc. Here, we present a novel approach for IP protection based on logic encryption (LE). Unlike established schemes for logic locking, our work obfuscates the circuit's structure and functionality by encoding and encrypting the logic itself. We devise an end-to-end method for practical LE implementation based on standard cryptographic algorithms, key-bit randomization, simple circuit design techniques, and system-level synthesis operations, all in a correct-by-construction manner. Our extensive analysis demonstrates the remarkable efficacy of our scheme, outperforming prior art against a range of oracle-less attacks covering crucial threat vectors, all with lower design overheads. We provide a full open-source release.
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Taxonomy
TopicsPhysical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) and Hardware Security · Cryptographic Implementations and Security · Coding theory and cryptography
