1. Tracks

The participating teams will compete to bypass/remove/reverse-engineer the countermeasures, implemented into the (soft/firm) hardware IPs, and to get access to the design functionality. Several countermeasure techniques will be implemented in order to prevent access to the design functionality. The provided designs will be divided in multiple tracks as listed below:

  • State Space Obfuscation (with oracle)
  • State Space Obfuscation (without oracle)
  • Combinational Logic Locking (with Oracle)
  • Combinational Logic Locking (without Oracle)
  • LUT Configuration (with Oracle)
  • LUT Configuration (without Oracle)
  • NoC Routing Table Configuration (with Oracle)
  • NoC Routing Table Configuration (without Oracle)
In each track, there will be designs of three different categories based on the complexity of the designs as mentioned below. The teams should expect multiple designs in each category:
  • Lowest Complexity
  • Medium Complexity
  • Highest Complexity

Checkpoints

For each design, there will be a set of checkpoints. To capture the finish flag, teams will need to go through each of these checkpoints sequentially. The set of checkpoints will differ based on the type of the countermeasure. The checkpoints are listed below (will be updated soon with additional details):

  • State Space Obfuscation Checkpoints
    1. Proper attack strategy explaination.
    2. Finding the added sequential elements.
    3. Binning the added sequential elements.
    4. Finding the initial state of unlocked design.
    5. Finding the sets of key inputs.
    6. Finding the unlocking key sequence.
  • Combinational Logic Locking Checkpoints
    1. Proper attack strategy explaination.
    2. Recovering the unlocking key (> 50%).
    3. Or, recovering the logic equivalent unlocked design.
  • LUT Configuration Checkpoints
    1. Proper attack strategy explaination.
    2. Recovering the unlocking bitstream (> 50%).
    3. Recovering the sets of key inputs.
  • NoC Routing Table Configuration Checkpoints
    1. Proper attack strategy explanation.
    2. Recovering the unlocking key.

Teams are allowed to use any available resource, algorithm, or approach while applying reverse engineering attacks. However, reverse engineering of oracle is NOT allowed and does NOT count towards evaluation.