Trojan-Free FPGA Hardware? The Challenge of End-User Verification

Ensuring the trustworthiness of Field Programmable Gate Arrays is essential for critical infrastructures' safe and reliable operation. However, the globalized nature of IC manufacturing introduces hardware trojan risks, creating challenges for end users tasked with ensuring hardware trustworthiness. This work explores the nature of the Field Programmable Gate Array hardware trojan threat across the IC supply chain. Detection and prevention methods are evaluated, focusing on their feasibility for end users. Although current research offers effective approaches, these methods are infeasible for end users. Our findings highlight a disconnect between vendor assurances, certification practices, and the methods for verifying hardware trustworthiness. We emphasize the need to bridge these gaps by developing end-user-feasible solutions to help verify the trustworthiness of FPGA-based systems.

Keywords: FPGA trustworthiness, Hardware trojans, Supply chain vulnerability.