Program Summary
The United States does not have a comprehensive program to certify that integrated circuits (ICs) going into U.S. weapons systems do not contain malicious circuits. In response to these concerns, DARPA has initiated its TRUST in Integrated Circuits program to develop technologies that will ensure the trust of ICs used in military systems, but designed and fabricated under untrusted conditions.
The TRUST program will trust only those techniques and testing technologies that can be measured. Basing the degree of trust assigned to an IC on measurable metrics, TRUST makes a radical departure from conventional approaches. Neither metrics for trust nor the testing methods to quantify trust have been used before in IC design and fabrication. This program is pursuing a metrics approach formulated in terms of probability of detection versus probability of false alarms. This provides a clear path to identification of an IC that was maliciously attacked. DARPA departs from the traditional definition, where the Trojan Horse is the signal, to a more basic measurement where any change in the iIC is considered the signal.
TRUST consists of three 1-year phases. The metrics become more difficult in each phase, with the number of transistors examined increasing and the time allowed to perform the examination decreasing. At the same time, the required probability of detecting a change to the IC increases and the probability of declaring a good circuit bad decreases.