Security Analysis of Universal Circuits as a Mechanism for Hardware Obfuscation

Computer Science > Cryptography and Security [Submitted on 3 Apr 2026] Security Analysis of Universal Circuits as a Mechanism for Hardware Obfuscation Zain Ul Abideen, Deepali Garg, Lawrence Pileggi, Samuel Pagliarini Universal Circuits (UCs) offer a promising approach to hardware Intellectual Property (IP) obfuscation, leveraging cryptographic principles to hide both structure and function in a programmable logic fabric. Their adaptability makes them especially suitable for the globalized Integrated Circuit (IC) supply chain, where security against threats like reverse engineering is crucial. Despite the potential, UC security remains largely unexplored. This work evaluates UC security against state-of-the-art oracle-guided (OG) and oracle-less (OL) attacks. Results show near-random success rates (approx 50%) for OG attacks whereas OL attacks display minimal structural leakage. Collectively, these findings confirm the feasibility of UCs for IP protection. Subjects: Cryptography and Security (cs.CR) Cite as: arXiv:2604.03396 [cs.CR]   (or arXiv:2604.03396v1 [cs.CR] for this version)   https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2604.03396 Focus to learn more Submission history From: Zain Ul Abideen [view email] [v1] Fri, 3 Apr 2026 18:59:00 UTC (309 KB) Access Paper: view license Current browse context: cs.CR < prev   |   next > new | recent | 2026-04 Change to browse by: cs References & Citations NASA ADS Google Scholar Semantic Scholar Export BibTeX Citation Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Demos Related Papers About arXivLabs Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)