Automated Generation of Security Assertions for RTL Models

Abstract

System-on-Chip (SoC) security is vital in designing trustworthy systems. Detecting and fixing a vulnerability in the early stages is easier and cost-effective. Assertion-based verification is widely used for functional validation of Register-Transfer Level (RTL) designs. Assertions can improve the controllability and observability that can lead to faster error detection and localization. Although assertions are widely used for functional validation of RTL models, there is limited effort in applying assertions to detect SoC security vulnerabilities. Specifically, a fundamental challenge in SoC security and trust validation is how to develop high-quality security assertions. In this article, we perform automated vulnerability analysis of RTL models to generate security assertions for six classes of vulnerabilities. Experimental results show that the generated security assertions can detect a wide variety of vulnerabilities. Our automated framework can drastically reduce the overall security validation effort compared to the manual development of security assertions. Automated generation of security assertions will enable assertion-based verification to be one of the most promising pre-silicon security sign-off solutions.