OPTI-Sim: Performing Optical Probing Simulation on Layout Design Files

Abstract

Recent studies have revealed that laser-based Side-Channel Analysis (SCA) attack methods, particularly Optical Probing (OP), pose a serious threat to the security of Integrated Circuits (ICs). State-of-the-art countermeasures focus mainly on approaches in the domain of circuit design to mitigate the OP attack. However, methods to analyze OP, which can be integrated into the tool flow during design time, are scarce. Consequently, the actual robustness against OP can only be evaluated during post-fabrication, which may require a redesign of the IC and result in huge costs. To mitigate the lack of such methods and tools, we introduce OPTI-Sim. OPTI-Sim is an OP analysis framework, enabling designers to explore the circuit’s susceptibility against OP during design time. As OPTI-Sim allows the study of the vulnerability of the circuits against OP attacks pre-fabrication, it has immense potential to reduce design time and production costs of security-relevant ICs. OPTI-Sim enables an automated OP analysis at the layout level by reading layout files, performing logical computations to retrieve the state of each logic cell in the design, and performing OP analysis. The applicability of OPTI-Sim is explored by designing and evaluating a cell library and exemplary circuits that are robustified against OP attacks. Another feature of the proposed framework discussed in this work is its ability to explore the detection of Hardware Trojans (HTs) using OP. HT detection using OP omits the need to have access to the golden chip to expose the HT, and results in a 100% HT detection rate. Furthermore, to the best of our knowledge, OPTI-Sim is the first OP framework of its kind.