Component Hiding Using Identification and Boundary Blurring Techniques

Abstract

Protecting software from adversarial attacks is extremely important for DoD technologies. When systems are compromised, the possibility exists for recovery costing millions of dollars and countless labor hours. Circuits implemented on embedded systems utilizing FPGA technology are the result of downloading software for instantiating circuits with specific functions or components. We consider the problem of component hiding a form of software protection. Component identification is a well studied problem. However, we use component identification as a metric for driving the cost of reverse engineering to an unreasonable level. We contribute to protection of software and circuitry by implementing a Java based component identification tool. With this tool, we can characterize time required for carrying out adversarial attacks on unaltered boolean circuitry. To counter component identification methods we utilize boundary blurring techniques which are either semantic preserving or semantic changing in order to prevent component identification methods. Furthermore, we will show these techniques can drive adversarial cost to unreasonable levels preventing compromise of critical systems.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Mar 01, 2010
Accession Number
ADA517004

Entities

People

  • James D. Parham Jr.

Organizations

  • Air Force Institute of Technology

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Advanced Electronics
  • Electronic Warfare
  • Engineered Resilient Systems
  • Human Systems

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Force
  • Algorithms
  • Computers
  • Department Of Defense
  • Detection
  • Diagrams
  • Electrical Engineering
  • Engineering
  • Field Programmable Gate Arrays
  • Governments
  • Identification
  • Identification Systems
  • Information Operations
  • Logic Gates
  • Measurement
  • Reverse Engineering
  • United States Government

Fields of Study

  • Computer science
  • Engineering

Readers

  • Cybersecurity.
  • Life Cycle Cost Analysis
  • Software Engineering.