Scalable IP Mimicry: End-to-End Deceptive IP Blending to Overcome Rectification and Scale Limitations of IP Camouflage
About
Semiconductor intellectual property (IP) theft incurs estimated annual losses ranging from $225 billion to $600 billion. Despite initiatives like the CHIPS Act, many semiconductor designs remain vulnerable to reverse engineering (RE). IP Camouflage is a recent breakthrough that expands beyond the logic gate hiding of traditional camouflage through "mimetic deception," where an entire module masquerades as a different IP. However, it faces key limitations: requires a high-overhead post-generation rectification step, is not easily scalable, and uses an AIG logic representation that is mismatched with standard RE analysis flows. This paper addresses these shortcommings by introducing two novel, end-to-end models. We propose a Graph-Matching algorithm to solve the representation problem and a DNAS-based NAND Array model to achieve scalability. To facilitate this, we also introduce a mimicry-aware partitioning method, enabling a divide-and-conquer approach for large-scale designs. Our results demonstrate that these models are resilient to SAT and GNN-RE attacks, providing efficient and scalable paths for end-to-end deceptive IP design.
Related benchmarks
| Task | Dataset | Result | Rank | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GNN-based Reverse Engineering Resilience | banyan_8 Small vs ctrl | F1 Score (Expose)37 | 3 | |
| GNN-based Reverse Engineering Resilience | c1908 (Small) vs c1355 | F1 (Expose)60 | 3 | |
| Hardware IP Camouflage | Tiny c17 mux_4 | Area1.16 | 3 | |
| Hardware IP Camouflage | Banyan 8 Small Ctrl | Area Ratio1.59 | 3 | |
| Hardware IP Camouflage | Small c1908 c1355 | Area1.39 | 3 | |
| Hardware IP Camouflage | Small c499 banyan_16 | Area1.18 | 3 | |
| Hardware IP Camouflage | Medium c5315 i2c | Area1.17 | 3 | |
| Hardware IP Camouflage | Medium c6288 bar | Area1.05 | 3 | |
| GNN-based Reverse Engineering Resilience | c17 vs mux_4 Tiny | F1 (Expose)15 | 3 | |
| GNN-based Reverse Engineering Resilience | c499 (Small) vs banyan_16 | F1 Expose31 | 3 |