R&D 100 winner of the day: Defensive Wire Routing for Untrusted Integrated Circuit Fabrication

With increased performance from smaller transistors, U.S. Government access to trusted high-performance foundries is decreasing, thereby disadvantaging U.S. military systems which require high degrees of trust. One concern with untrusted fabrication is the issue of malicious modification or tamper, where a trusted design is modified by a fabricator to insert a “hardware Trojan” or “backdoor” that can compromise downstream system security. The government therefore seeks novel design-time methods that deter and/or prevent malicious modification in order to enable trusted use of ICs fabricated by untrusted foundries.  Defensive Wire Routing, from MIT Lincoln Laboratory, comprises two patent-pending techniques that can be applied during the design of an integrated circuit which enable post-fabrication inspection for malicious compromise. Unlike other approaches, Defensive Wire Routing can be applied at scale to any digital circuit design, is non-destructive, and does not require a “gold standard” to compare against. The Defensive Wire Routing and Guard Wire techniques can be focused narrowly on security-critical components, enable post-fabrication inspection and tamper resistance and can be integrated into traditional electronic design automation tool flows for widespread employment.