16. Conclusion and Future Work

Hardware Trojan horse or hardware Trojan attacks have been the subject of active research for the past decade. The scope of this research has broadened over time – with the possibility of malicious hardware modification extending to different stages of integrated circuit’s life cycle (from IP to microchips) as well as to different levels of hardware abstractions (from microchips to printed circuit boards). It now represents a new branch of hardware security. Security concerns caused by hardware Trojans are relevant to various parties involved in the life cycle of electronic hardware – from system-on-chip designer to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to end users. The fact that the electronic hardware is subject to malicious alterations is an intriguing departure from conventional wisdom, which assumes that hardware is hard to compromise, is fundamentally more secure and trustworthy than its software counterparts, and hence can be used as trust anchors or “root of trust” for diverse computing and communication systems.