Leaking Wireless ICs via Hardware Trojan-Infected Synchronization

We propose a Hardware Trojan (HT) attack in wireless Integrated Circuits (ICs) that aims at leaking sensitive information within legitimate transmission. The HT is hidden inside the transmitter modulating into preamble of each transmitted frame which used for synchronization with receiver. data leakage does not affect and imperceptible by inconspicuous nominal receiver as it incur any performance penalty communication. A knowledgeable rogue receiver, however, can recover using signal processing too expensive impractical to be during run-time receivers. mechanism designed circuit-level embedded entirely digital section RF transceiver having tiny footprint. proposed demonstrated measurements on hardware platform. demonstrate stealthiness attack, i.e., its ability evade defenses based testing monitoring, robustness leaked even under unfavorable channel conditions.