An Efficient Security Closure Methodology for EM-based Attacks on Power Grid Structures

Hardware Trojans (HTs) are a significant issue in hardware security, as they have the capability to compromise the integrity of critical electronic systems. Power grid structures of modern integrated circuits are an important component that is vulnerable to electromigration (EM)-based attacks, which can affect the security and reliability of the chip simply by modifying the reservoirs, which are passive wire segments that are employed to increase reliability robustness. To address this issue, a security closure methodology is essential to identify potential vulnerabilities in the power grid by analyzing EM-induced Trojans capable of stealthily degrading chip lifetime by removing reservoirs. In this paper, we propose an efficient methodology that is based on the semi-analytical solution of the EM transient analysis and can be effectively employed in parallel for all the different lines of the power grid. Experimental evaluation on the OpenROAD power grid benchmarks demonstrates that our method can locate all the susceptible lines of the power grid that are vulnerable from the reservoir removal in less than 33 seconds, while it calculates the time-to-failure (TTF) with and without the reservoirs.