13. Obfuscation and Encryption for Securing Semiconductor Supply Chain

With the advent of globalization, the semiconductor industry has become increasingly vulnerable to the piracy of semiconductor intellectual property (IP), the overuse of IPs in system-on-chips (SoCs), and the overproduction of integrated circuits (ICs). In the previous chapters, various obfuscation approaches based on keys were introduced to prevent these attacks. Such approaches require a confidential and secure method for communicating and storing keys in the ICs. In this chapter, you will learn about the following: \(\bullet \) various cryptographic primitives commonly employed in different Internet applications; \(\bullet \) the vulnerabilities of transmitting and storing chip unlock keys that prevent IP overuse and IC overproduction; \(\bullet \) a secure communication protocol for transferring chip unlock keys from the IP owners and SoC designers to the untrusted foundries and assemblies; \(\bullet \) how the IEEE P1735 standard can encrypt IPs and manage the chip unlock keys for IPs; and \(\bullet \) an IP digest that prevents untrusted entities from tampering with encrypted IPs. Note that the secure key management techniques discussed in this chapter focus on obfuscated and encrypted designs; however, they are equally applicable to all kinds of key-based obfuscation techniques discussed throughout this book.