Security Analysis of Universal Circuits as a Mechanism for Hardware Obfuscation

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the security of Universal Circuits for hardware obfuscation, showing they resist certain attacks and are promising for protecting intellectual property in integrated circuits.

Contribution

It provides the first comprehensive security analysis of Universal Circuits against modern attack methods, demonstrating their effectiveness for IP protection.

Findings

OG attacks succeed at about 50% rate, akin to random guessing

OL attacks reveal minimal structural information

UCs are feasible for hardware IP protection

Abstract

Universal Circuits (UCs) offer a promising approach to hardware Intellectual Property (IP) obfuscation, leveraging cryptographic principles to hide both structure and function in a programmable logic fabric. Their adaptability makes them especially suitable for the globalized Integrated Circuit (IC) supply chain, where security against threats like reverse engineering is crucial. Despite the potential, UC security remains largely unexplored. This work evaluates UC security against state-of-the-art oracle-guided (OG) and oracle-less (OL) attacks. Results show near-random success rates (approx 50%) for OG attacks whereas OL attacks display minimal structural leakage. Collectively, these findings confirm the feasibility of UCs for IP protection.