Out in the wilderness, it is a known instinct that at times the key to survival is to stay invisible. Chameleons are just one of many examples that have mastered the art of camouflage as an important tool for survival, protecting themselves against the many dangers that might bring an end to their life if they are spotted and targeted.
In a major leap, transfer this thought into modern chip design – where new, innovative concepts are created by bright designers who find themselves in a different struggle to survive against hackers who dedicate their passion and sophistication to steal data and even the design itself.
In a nearly Darwinian survival of the fittest, if your design can’t be protected from such hackers, it’s dead! You must not only make sure that your data is kept safe while stationary, in transit or in process, but you must protect your very design as well, avoiding third parties from performing unauthorized copies and use of your design.
An effective way to do this is to apply the concept of camouflage to impair the ability of predators to understand your design. If a wild wolf would look at a rabbit and see an elephant, he would surely not attempt to hunt it, as his odds would be surely against success.
In this paper we will show how a bit of illusion can be used to avoid unauthorized copies, and if they do happen, how to make sure that the end result of the copy is so badly damaged that it becomes useless.
