Secure scan design using improved random order and its evaluations

Masaru Oya, Yuta Atobe, Youhua Shi, Masao Yanagisawa, Nozomu Togawa

Abstract: Scan test using scan chains is one of the most important DFT techniques. However, scan-based attacks are reported which can retrieve the secret key in crypto circuits by using scan chains. Secure scan architecture is strongly required to protect scan chains from scan-based attacks. This paper proposes an improved version of random order as a secure scan architecture. In improved random order, a scan chain is partitioned into multiple sub-chains. The structure of the scan chain changes dynamically by selecting a subchain to scan out. Testability and security of the proposed improved random order are also discussed in the paper, and the implementation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.