Preventing hardware Trojans in switch chip based on payload decoupling

Hardware Trojans in integrated circuit chips have the characteristics of being covert, destructive, and difficult to protect, which have seriously endangered the security of the chips themselves and the information systems to which they belong. Existing solutions generally rely on passive detection techniques. In this paper, a hardware Trojans active defense mechanism is designed for network switching chips based on the principle of encryption algorithm. By encoding the data entering the chip, the argot hidden in the data cannot trigger the hardware Trojans that may exist in the chip, so that the chip can work normally even if it is implanted with a hardware Trojans. The proposed method is proved to be effective in preventing hardware Trojans with different trigger characteristics by simulation tests and practical tests on our secure switching chip.