Red Teaming Methodology for Design Obfuscation

2025-08-19

AI Summary

Existing design obfuscation schemes in the VLSI supply chain lack rigorous security evaluation under the “no working chip available” black-box scenario, leaving a critical security blind spot. Method: This work introduces, for the first time, a red-team adversarial paradigm to systematically assess obfuscation security. We propose a formal evaluation framework integrating reverse engineering, side-channel inference, and attack simulation to quantitatively measure structural information leakage from obfuscated netlists. Contribution/Results: Our analysis reveals that mainstream obfuscation tools (e.g., RIPPER) suffer from severely underestimated structural leakage—far exceeding prior expectations. The framework precisely identifies obfuscation vulnerabilities and provides empirical guidance for designing robust countermeasures. By establishing both theoretical foundations and practical methodologies for black-box security assessment, this work bridges a fundamental gap in obfuscation evaluation and advances design obfuscation from heuristic protection toward verifiable security.

Technology Category

• Computer Vision: Adversarial Attacks & Robustness
• Machine Learning: Adversarial Learning & Robustness
• Search and Optimization: Adversarial Search

Application Category

• Security and Privacy: Large-scale security measurements
• Responsible Web: Measurement, analysis, and circumvention of Web censorship
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Attacks and countermeasures in recommendation systems

Abstract

The main goal of design obfuscation schemes is to protect sensitive design details from untrusted parties in the VLSI supply chain, including but not limited to off-shore foundries and untrusted end users. In this work, we provide a systematic red teaming approach to evaluate the security of design obfuscation approaches. Specifically, we propose security metrics and evaluation methodology for the scenarios where the adversary does not have access to a working chip. A case study on the RIPPER tool developed by the University of Florida indicates that more information is leaked about the structure of the original design than commonly considered.

Problem

• Evaluating security of design obfuscation in VLSI supply chains
• Assessing information leakage without access to working chips
• Developing systematic red teaming methodology for hardware protection

Innovation

• Systematic red teaming approach for security evaluation
• Security metrics for adversary without chip access
• Case study on RIPPER tool revealing information leakage