Large Delay Analog Trojans: A Silent Fabrication-Time Attack Exploiting Analog Modalities

This article presents large delay-based analog Trojan circuits, a new class of analog Trojans that can be interfaced with digital and analog macros to launch fabrication-time hardware attacks. Two different circuit topologies of analog Trojan are presented, which can generate a delayed trigger output after two days and 60 ms, respectively, when implemented in 65-nm CMOS technology. The large delay is achieved using the transistor's gate-oxide leakage current or a diode's reverse saturation current in combination with the Miller capacitance-based circuits. The proposed analog Trojans can operate across multiple on-chip power domains and can be launched without any digital input signal, making their detection challenging. They show very limited variation in side-channel parameters, which makes them harder to detect through side-channel analysis. In addition, the proposed designs have a small area footprint of 55.5 μm
²
and 28 μm
²
, respectively, and can be easily concealed on-chip. We also demonstrate an attack launched using these Trojans to construct a “kill-switch” that disables the power management unit of an IC. Process and temperature variations were also investigated to assess their impact on the design. We implemented the thick-oxide gate leakage modeling to study the robustness of the proposed Trojan design. We also present the long-term potential threat of these Trojans where the output trigger signal is generated after an even larger delay.