{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,31]],"date-time":"2026-03-31T06:25:33Z","timestamp":1774938333130,"version":"3.50.1"},"reference-count":34,"publisher":"Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)","issue":"1","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2019,11,22]],"date-time":"2019-11-22T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1574380800000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/www.acm.org\/publications\/policies\/copyright_policy#Background"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/100000001","name":"National Science Foundation","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["1603483"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["1603483"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/100000001","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"DOI":"10.13039\/100004351","name":"Cisco Systems","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","id":[{"id":"10.13039\/100004351","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":["dl.acm.org"],"crossmark-restriction":true},"short-container-title":["ACM Trans. Des. Autom. Electron. Syst."],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2020,1,31]]},"abstract":"<jats:p>Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) have become an attractive choice for diverse applications due to their reconfigurability and unique security features. However, designs mapped to FPGAs are prone to malicious modifications or tampering of critical functions. Besides, targeted modifications have demonstrably compromised FPGA implementations of various cryptographic primitives. Existing security measures based on encryption and authentication can be bypassed using their side-channel vulnerabilities to execute bitstream tampering attacks. Furthermore, numerous resource-constrained applications are now equipped with low-end FPGAs, which may not support power-hungry cryptographic solutions. In this article, we propose a novel obfuscation-based approach to achieve strong resistance against both random and targeted pre-configuration tampering of critical functions in an FPGA design. Our solution first identifies the unique structural and functional features that separate the critical function from the rest of the design using a machine learning guided framework. The selected features are eliminated by applying appropriate obfuscation techniques, many of which take advantage of \u201cFPGA dark silicon\u201d\u2014unused lookup table resources\u2014to mask the critical functions. Furthermore, following the same obfuscation principle, a redundancy-based technique is proposed to thwart targeted, rule-based, and random tampering. We have developed a complete methodology and custom software toolflow that integrates with commercial tools. By applying the masking technique on a design containing AES, we show the effectiveness of the proposed framework in hiding the critical S-Box function. We implement the redundancy integrated solution in various cryptographic designs to analyze the overhead. To protect 16.2% critical component of a design, the proposed approach incurs an average area overhead of only 2.4% over similar redundancy-based approaches, while achieving strong security.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1145\/3361147","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2019,11,22]],"date-time":"2019-11-22T18:41:47Z","timestamp":1574448107000},"page":"1-32","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1145\/crossmark-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":12,"title":["Hidden in Plaintext"],"prefix":"10.1145","volume":"25","author":[{"given":"Tamzidul","family":"Hoque","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Kai","family":"Yang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Robert","family":"Karam","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Shahin","family":"Tajik","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Domenic","family":"Forte","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Mark","family":"Tehranipoor","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Swarup","family":"Bhunia","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"320","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2019,11,22]]},"reference":[{"key":"e_1_2_1_1_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.18502\/keg.v3i7.3072"},{"key":"e_1_2_1_2_1","volume-title":"IWLS 2005 benchmarks. 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IEEE, 1--6. Yu-Wei Lee and Nur A. Touba. 2015. Improving logic obfuscation via logic cone analysis. In Proceedings of the Latin-American Test Symposium. IEEE, 1--6."},{"key":"e_1_2_1_16_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1109\/TKDE.2005.66"},{"key":"e_1_2_1_17_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.46586\/tches.v2018.i3.573-595"},{"key":"e_1_2_1_18_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1109\/TMSCS.2016.2584052"},{"key":"e_1_2_1_19_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1145\/2435264.2435282"},{"key":"e_1_2_1_20_1","unstructured":"OpenCores. 2018. The Reference Community for Free and Open Source Gateware IP Cores. Retrieved from https:\/\/opencores.org\/.  OpenCores. 2018. The Reference Community for Free and Open Source Gateware IP Cores. Retrieved from https:\/\/opencores.org\/."},{"key":"e_1_2_1_21_1","volume-title":"Proceedings of the Design, Automation 8 Test in Europe Conference 8 Exhibition. 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