Flip-UnLock: An Anomaly Detection Attack on Flip-Flop-Based Logic Locking
Research output: Contribution to book/Conference proceedings/Anthology/Report › Conference contribution › Contributed › peer-review
Contributors
- Transregio 404: Next Generation Electronics With Active Devices in Three Dimensions
Abstract
Globalization of the IC supply chain has led to rising hardware-based reverse engineering attacks. Logic locking has been proposed to counter these threats. However, the emergence of machine learning (ML)-based attacks has proved that even the most complex logic locking approaches leave structural traces around the locked subparts of the circuit stemming from optimization steps utilized by security-agnostic synthesis tools. To prevent such optimizations around the locked subparts of the circuit, a flip-flop-based locking approach named Flip-Lock has been proposed that incorporates flip-flops in locking substructures. This paper demonstrates that while flip-flop-based locking substructures effectively mitigate local structural leakages and counter all conventional machine learning-based attacks, they inadvertently introduce circuit-level timing anomalies. These anomalies can be exploited by anomaly detection mechanisms, thereby undermining the security guarantees of the flip-flopbased locking technique. We introduce Flip-UnLock, an attack that transforms the circuit into a timing graph and applies anomaly detection techniques to differentiate between original and add-on locking flip-flops in circuits secured by flip-flop-based locking. Our approach successfully compromises the flip-flopbased locking mechanism in various benchmark circuits with an average accuracy of 88.3%.
Details
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | IEEE Computer Society Annual Symposium on VLSI, ISVLSI 2025 - Conference Proceedings |
| Publisher | IEEE Computer Society |
| ISBN (electronic) | 979-8-3315-3477-6 |
| ISBN (print) | 979-8-3315-3478-3 |
| Publication status | Published - 2025 |
| Peer-reviewed | Yes |
Publication series
| Series | Proceedings of IEEE Computer Society Annual Symposium on VLSI, ISVLSI |
|---|---|
| ISSN | 2159-3469 |
Conference
| Title | 2025 IEEE Computer Society Annual Symposium on VLSI |
|---|---|
| Abbreviated title | ISVLSI 2025 |
| Conference number | 28 |
| Duration | 6 - 9 July 2025 |
| Website | |
| Location | Elite City Resort |
| City | Kalamata |
| Country | Greece |
Keywords
Research priority areas of TU Dresden
ASJC Scopus subject areas
Keywords
- Anomaly detection, Logic Locking, ML-based Structural attacks