Z-Channel Modeling of Hardware Trojans

Farahnak-Ghazani, Maryam; Nosratinia, Aria

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/130323 Copy

Description

Title

Z-Channel Modeling of Hardware Trojans

Author(s)

• Farahnak-Ghazani, Maryam
• Nosratinia, Aria

Issue Date

2025-09-17

Keyword(s)

• Transmitter Trojans
• Broadcast channels
• Mismatch capacity
• Trojan detection

Abstract

Hardware Trojans are malicious modifications to communication circuitry that leak information by altering the transmitted signal. This paper models certain classes of hardware Trojans via the cascading of a Z channel. We use the Z-channel to capture the asymmetric on-off behavior of certain Trojans—such as amplitude-based Trojans—that selectively reduce the power (and hence signal-to-noise ratio) of some legitimate symbols while leaving other symbols unaffected. For convenience and tractability of cascaded channels, the legitimate and the rogue channels are also modeled as Z channels in this initial study. We characterize the tradeoff between information leakage to the rogue receiver and rate loss at the legitimate receiver and analyze Trojan detectability under varying assumptions about the legitimate receiver’s knowledge of the rogue codebook. Numerical results illuminate our findings.

Publisher

Allerton Conference on Communication, Control, and Computing

Series/Report Name or Number

2025 61st Allerton Conference on Communication, Control, and Computing Proceedings

ISSN

2836-4503

Type of Resource

Text

Genre of Resource

Conference Paper/Presentation

Language

eng

Handle URL

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/130323

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2025 is held by Maryam Farahnak-Ghazani and Aria Nosratinia.

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