Key Researcher Talk – Combinatorial Testing Methods and Algorithms for Detecting and Locating Cryptographic Trojans by Dimitris E. Simos (Remote)

Join the 4th edition of our Key Researcher Talk Series!

Combinatorial Testing Methods and Algorithms for Detecting and Locating Cryptographic Trojans

Combinatorial methods have attracted attention as a means of providing strong assurance at reduced cost, but are these methods practical and cost-effective, in the case of malicious hardware logic detection? In this talk, we are concerned with the problem of detecting cryptographic Trojans that manifest as instances of malicious hardware on top of Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) technologies. We will develop theoretical and algorithmic methods originating from the field of covering arrays, a special class of combinatorial designs, as a means to provide a fully automated testing framework capable of revealing hard to spot malicious instances of Trojans. We will further demonstrate that combinatorial testing provides the theoretical guarantees for detecting and locating a Trojan of specific lengths by covering all input combinations. Our findings indicate that combinatorial testing constructs can improve the existing FPGA Trojan detection capabilities by reducing significantly the number of tests needed by several orders of magnitude.

This work is part of a larger combinatorial security testing framework, which asides providing mathematical guarantees for hardware Trojan detection also ensures quality assurance and effective re-verification for security testing of web applications, operating systems and communication protocols.

Agenda

14:00 -14:30: Talk by Dimitris E. Simos

Free Registration

Please reach out to us at events@sba-reserarch.org if you would like to join.

hosted by Vienna ACM SIGSAC Chapter.