This repository contains ready-to-use configuration files for the data set of our paper (90 nm, 65 nm, 40 nm and 28 nm). These files can simply be run in a shell and will output our research results in a convenient HTML document. This allows for a direct reproducibility of the studies.

Find our related publication "Red Team vs. Blue Team: A Real-World Hardware Trojan Detection Case Study Across Four Modern CMOS Technology Generations" here: ieee xplore / ieee computer / eprint

In case the replaced cell instances need to be known for further studies without re-running all algorithms, please feel free to contact the authors via email: Endres Puschner endres.puschner@mpi-sp.org

Setup

Tested on Python 3.10.5 (with gdspy 1.6.11, numpy 1.23.0, cv2 4.6.0 and imutils 0.5.4).

The required Python dependencies can be installed using pip install -r requirements.txt. This will install the following modules:

• gdspy
• numpy
• opencv-python
• imutils

The full dataset can be acquired from here:

• Edmond (Max Planck Digital Library)

Once downloaded, all zip archives need to be unpacked into the data directory, requiring in total 300.3 GiB free space on the filesystem. In case the data directory will be placed somewhere else, the scripts should be run with the working directory set to the directory containing the data directory. Another option is to adapt the three paths in the beginning of each run_XXnm.py script.

There is also a demo dataset (only filler cell detection) already included in this repository. This could be run with:

python run_90nm_demo.py fill

Having the full datasets in the data directory, the run_XXnm.py files might be run directly from the shell, e.g.:

python run_28.py fill

or

python run_28.py std

The resulting data is output in the output directory.

General Idea

The general idea of chipsuite was to develop a tool that can compare real chip imagery against GDSII files, but it turned out to be more powerful. By now it is possible to...

• load global stitching information from the MIST tool
• load GDSII bounding boxes into a list and decide whether the bounding box is a standard cell or a filler cell
• shift the design coordinates to the global image coordinates with a 4-edge affine transformation
• correct the transformed coordinates on a tile / coordinate base
• run various algorithms on the combination of tile / cell image and design bounding box
  • detect brighter areas and based on a threshold decide whether the cell image matches the bounding box
  • detect vias (circular structures of a set size) and decide based on the probability of vias whether the cell image matches the bounding box
  • decide whether the cell image matches a cell image of another cell image using template matching / correlation based on the bounding box

Modules

This project consists out of seperate modules for different parts of the functionality it is designed for.

gds_loader.GDSLoader

• Opens up a GDSII file and applies a 4-edge transformation on all bounding boxes inside.
• Stores the state of the calculated bounding boxes and supplementary information in a pickle file to be able to reload the state without the need to recalculate all the values and opening up large GDSII files again.

stitching_info.StitchingInfo

• Opens up MIST global position files.
• Analyzes minimum / maximum coordinates and count all tiles.
• Detects the tile size based on the first tile image's size.

bbox_generator.BboxGenerator

• Applies a user set correction function for X / Y coordinates each.
• Provides a generator to iterate through every bounding box on a specific tile.
• Helper functions to draw bounding boxes on tiles and to show this image.

algorithm.Algorithm

• Base functions available in all algorithms, such as iterating over every tile.

algorithm.Algorithm2

• Detects circular structures (vias).
• Detects repeating structure of filler cells. (experimental)

algorithm.Algorithm3 (3_2, 3_3, 3_4, 3_5)

• Utilizes template matching to detect different cells

config.Config

• Contains colors for displayed bounding boxes (colorblind-proof!).

cvhelper

• Contains some extra functions to be used together with OpenCV.

powerline (1, 2)

• Two power line detection algorithms.

identify.CellIdentifier

• Based on template matching and a library of cell templates, find out which of the template matches best given a cell image.

How This Works

Preparations:

• Stitch the tiles with MIST/BigStitcher/... . MIST outputs the correct format in this "global-positions" textfile that can directly be used by StitchingInfo.load_mist_file(...).
• Check orientation difference between GDSII and stitched & fused image, apply parameter extra_transformation of GDSLoader.load_gds(...) appropriately.
• Review all four tiles that show edges of the chip and put the global coordinates of the edges into the image_edges list of GDSLoader.load_gds(...).

Tune Parameters:

• Let the script run in interactive mode "-i".
• After the first tile is analyzed, stop the process (Ctrl+C), now you are in the python interactive console.
• Review how say every fifth tile with cells on it looks like, do this by typing for example bbox_generator.show_boxes(5, 5). (Any of these image windows can only be closed using any keyboard key for now, every other approach might crash the script.)
  • The coordinate offsets between GDS bounding box and the visible matching box in the image should be noted in a table which is then used to fix the offsets.
  • The correct_stitching function of BboxGenerator uses the corr_x and corr_y lambda to fix x and y offsets.
  • BboxGenerator.corr_table is a reference implementation for an interpolating table lookup for every fifth tile.
  • Maybe it could be solved easier with another correction function that can be written (dependent on tile X, Y and the original global coordinate, resulting in the new global coordinate) and then be supplied to the set_corr_x and set_corr_y functions of the BboxGenerator instance.
  • Profit. The alignment of the GDS bounding boxes now match as good as possible to the tile images shown with show_boxes.
• Now we need to verify the Threshold and cropping of bbox contents so vias (white circles) are well visible on standard cells, but not on filler cells. This is depending on the algorithm used, we for now focus on algorithm 1.
  • Lower the threshold to 0 or 1. It is measured in the number of white pixels from which a cell is displayed for review.
  • Now let it analyze a tile with cells on it, for instance by entering algorithm.analyzeTile(7, 7).
  • In case the thresholding-value is wrong, no white pixels could be found or the cell has white clouds that should not be there. Usually vias stand out very much with a very bright pixel value (200+) compared to the rest.
  • In case the additional cropping is too much or too less, adapt the cell crop values with algorithm.set_cell_crop(...) to cutout less or more of the cropped cell image to not show any adjacent cells in most cases.
  • Finally now also increase the threshold value slowly to reduce the false-positive rate of standard cells.
  • Eventually now only "trojan cells" that are labeled as filler cells but contain many vias (untypical for filler cells containing essentially nothing) trigger a review screen.

Run the Loop:

• Once all parameters are as good as desired (do not fine tune for more than a day! ;-) ) let the loop run through all tiles of the chip.
• To do this, either re-run the python script (best still in interactive mode just in case something goes wrong), or run algorithm.analyze().
• Depending on the interactive setting of the algorithm object, every time a suspect cell is found, the cell image as well as additional processed images are shown to the user.
  • In case it was probably only a false positive, press any key but one of the following in either of the image windows to close them and to continue the loop.
  • Press "s" in case the suspect cell should be saved (this saves a by a fraction of algorithm.set_fract(...) scaled version of the tile with every filler cell and the suspect cell in Config.COLOR_HIGHLIGHT) and shown. After the shown tile is closed with any key the process continues.
  • Press "q" to abort the loop. This might be done to review some parameters and to then restart the loop at the current tile, with algorithm.analyze_loop(x, y) (put the most recent values of the "Tile: .." output for x and y)
• In case the non-interactive mode is chosen (default in the runner scripts), HTML files with all the results will be generated.
• The whole analyze Loop should not take too long on a modern laptop (for the supplied datasets less than 2 hours per run).
• Have fun finding the eggs / needle in haystack nearly automatic!

Academic Context

If you want to cite the work please don't hesitate to cite the original paper (ieee xplore / ieee computer / eprint).

@inproceedings {2023puschner,
    author = {Endres Puschner and Thorben Moos and Steffen Becker and Christian Kison and Amir Moradi and Christof Paar},
    booktitle = {2023 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (SP)},
    title = {Red Team vs. Blue Team: A Real-World Hardware Trojan Detection Case Study Across Four Modern CMOS Technology Generations},
    year = {2023},
    pages = {763-781},
    keywords = {hardware-trojans;very-large-scale-integration;gdsii;integrated-circuits-verification},
    doi = {10.1109/SP46215.2023.00044},
    url = {https://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/SP46215.2023.00044},
    publisher = {IEEE Computer Society},
    address = {Los Alamitos, CA, USA},
    month = {may}
}

License

ChipSuite is licensed under MIT License to encourage collaboration with other research groups and contributions from the industry. Please refer to the license file for further information.