LIB-TRAP: Standard Cell Library Hardware Trojan Risk Assessment and Prevention

[2607.01526] LIB-TRAP: Standard Cell Library Hardware Trojan Risk Assessment and Prevention Skip to main content Search Submit Donate Log in Computer Science > Cryptography and Security arXiv:2607.01526 (cs) [Submitted on 1 Jul 2026 ( v1 ), last revised 25 Aug 2026 (this version, v2)] Title: LIB-TRAP: Standard Cell Library Hardware Trojan Risk Assessment and Prevention Authors: Harish Kumar Dharavath , Md Muhtasim Alam Chowdhury , Rozhin Yasaei , Soheil Salehi View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract: Vulnerabilities inherent to the fabless semiconductor manufacturing model have significantly increased the risk of malicious Hardware Trojan (HT) insertion, posing severe threats to hardware security. Several HT mitigation and detection strategies have been developed, and existing works explore the insertion of HTs in the space between standard cells in an integrated circuit. However, there is a lack of research into the vulnerabilities posed by the building blocks of most digital designs on the market today, the standard cells. This work investigates a novel threat model in which standard cells are considered untrusted. Our proposed threat model provides the design house with a tampered standard cell library. The intended netlist is synthesized and implemented using the tampered library. During fabrication, a nefarious foundry replaces the library's deactivated HT cells with activated counterparts. Using open-source and industry-standard Electronic Design Automation (EDA) tools, existing standard cell libraries, Saed32nm and Sky130nm, are converted into malicious libraries capable of masking the presence of arbitrary HTs from IC designers. The malicious library is then applied and characterized in multiple standard benchmark designs. To demonstrate the efficacy and stealthiness of this standard cell-based attack vector, three benchmark circuits, an AES-128 encryption core, an Ethernet controller, and a WISHBONE DMA engine, were synthesized using both clean and Trojan-infected libraries across Synopsys 32nm and SkyWater 130nm technologies. Design-level features, including total cell count, total area, dynamic power consumption, and static power, were extracted from these synthesized circuits to serve as inputs for binary classification Subjects: Cryptography and Security (cs.CR) ; Hardware Architecture (cs.AR) Cite as: arXiv:2607.01526 [cs.CR] (or arXiv:2607.01526v2 [cs.CR] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2607.01526 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite Submission history From: Harish Kumar Dharavath [ view email ] [v1] Wed, 1 Jul 2026 22:46:48 UTC (4,186 KB) [v2] Tue, 25 Aug 2026 05:46:07 UTC (4,186 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View PDF HTML (experimental) TeX Source view license Additional Features Audio Summary Current browse context: cs.CR < prev | next > new | recent | 2026-07 Change to browse by: cs cs.AR References & Citations SciX Google Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer ( What is the Explorer? ) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers ( What is Connected Papers? ) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps ( What is Litmaps? ) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations ( What are Smart Citations? ) Code, Data, Media Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv Toggle alphaXiv ( What is alphaXiv? ) Links to Code Toggle CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers ( What is CatalyzeX? ) DagsHub Toggle DagsHub ( What is DagsHub? ) GotitPub Toggle Gotit.pub ( What is GotitPub? ) Huggingface Toggle Hugging Face ( What is Huggingface? ) ScienceCast Toggle ScienceCast ( What is ScienceCast? ) Demos Demos Replicate Toggle Replicate ( What is Replicate? ) Spaces Toggle Hugging Face Spaces ( What is Spaces? ) Spaces Toggle TXYZ.AI ( What is TXYZ.AI? ) Related Papers Recommenders and Search Tools Link to Influence Flower Influence Flower ( What are Influence Flowers? ) Core recommender toggle CORE Recommender ( What is CORE? ) Author Venue Institution Topic About arXivLabs arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs . Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax ( What is MathJax? ) We gratefully acknowledge support from our major funders , member institutions , and all contributors. About · Help · Contact · Subscribe · Copyright · Privacy · Accessibility · Operational Status (opens in new tab)

Related documents

• LIB-TRAP: Standard Cell Library Hardware Trojan Risk Assessment and Prevention#670665
• LIB-TRAP: Standard Cell Library Hardware Trojan Risk Assessment and Prevention#332469
• TrojanGYM: A Detector-in-the-Loop LLM for Adaptive RTL Hardware Trojan Insertion#635730
• TrojanGYM: A Detector-in-the-Loop LLM for Adaptive RTL Hardware Trojan Insertion#633381
• LoREnc: Low-Rank Encryption for Securing Foundation Models and LoRA Adapters#618069