Survey on Applications of Formal Methods in Reverse Engineering and Intellectual Property Protection

Recent years have seen a growth in the use of algorithmic techniques, and especially formal methods, in reverse engineering. Depending on the motivation and requirements of the attacker, algorithms can be used for reconstructing circuit netlists, extracting a higher-level description of a circuit from unstructured sea-of-gates, or resynthesizing the Boolean function of a logic circuit from examples. At each step of this process, formal methods can be leveraged. In this survey, we review some of the applications of formal methods in reverse engineering and in IP protection.

近年来，算法技术（尤其是正式方法）在反向工程中的使用增长。根据攻击者的动机和要求，算法可用于重建电路网络名单，从非结构化的公园中提取对电路的更高级别描述，或者从示例中重新提出逻辑电路的布尔功能。在此过程的每个步骤中，都可以利用形式的方法。在这项调查中，我们回顾了形式方法在反向工程和IP保护中的一些应用。