Continuity in Security: Leveraging LLM for Translating Security Properties Across Hardware Designs

Authors

Bulbul Ahmed, Sujan Kumar Saha, Jingbo Zhou, Sohrab Aftabjahani, Mark Tehranipoor, Farimah Farahmandi

Abstract

Systems on Chips (SoCs) are integral to modern devices, from consumer electronics to critical applications in healthcare, finance, and defense, housing various vital assets. Ensuring comprehensive security verification is crucial to protect these assets from diverse vulnerabilities. However, traditional security verification is time-consuming, and the rapid pace of market-driven design cycles demands new versions within tight time-to-market windows. Conducting exhaustive security verification from scratch for each new design iteration is both challenging and impractical. This paper introduces a novel framework leveraging large language models (LLMs) to translate security properties from legacy designs to new versions at the Register Transfer Level (RTL). By reusing existing verification efforts, this approach significantly reduces verification time while maintaining security continuity. Our methodology not only trans-lates but also extends and expands security properties to detect new vulnerabilities. Experimental results demonstrate substantial improvements in security continuity and vulnerability detection, advancing hardware security verification for evolving SoCs.

@inproceedings{ahmed2024continuity,
  title={Continuity in Security: Leveraging LLM for Translating Security Properties Across Hardware Designs},
  author={Ahmed, Bulbul and Saha, Sujan Kumar and Zhou, Jingbo and Aftabjahani, Sohrab and Tehranipoor, Mark and Farahmandi, Farimah},
  booktitle={2024 IFIP/IEEE 32nd International Conference on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI-SoC)},
  year={2024},
  organization={IEEE}
}