paperApril 2026Unreviewed

Can Agents Secure Hardware? Evaluating Agentic LLM-Driven Obfuscation for IP Protection

Sujan Ghimire, Parsa Mirfasihi, Muhtasim Alam Chowdhury, Veeramani Pugazhenthi, Harish Kumar Dharavath, Farshad Firouzi, Rozhin Yasaei, Pratik Satam, Soheil Salehi

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Abstract

The globalization of integrated circuit (IC) design and manufacturing has increased the exposure of hardware intellectual property (IP) to untrusted stages of the supply chain, raising concerns about reverse engineering, piracy, tampering, and overbuilding. Hardware netlist obfuscation is a promising countermeasure, but automating the generation of functionally correct and security-relevant obfuscated circuits remains challenging, particularly for benchmark-scale designs. This paper presents an

Framework mappings

OWASP Top 10 for LLM Applications

LLM03Supply Chain

MITRE ATLAS

AML.T0010AI Supply Chain Compromise

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Cite

@misc{ghimire2026can,
  title = {{Can Agents Secure Hardware? Evaluating Agentic LLM-Driven Obfuscation for IP Protection}},
  author = {Sujan Ghimire and Parsa Mirfasihi and Muhtasim Alam Chowdhury and Veeramani Pugazhenthi and Harish Kumar Dharavath and Farshad Firouzi and Rozhin Yasaei and Pratik Satam and Soheil Salehi},
  year = {2026},
  month = apr,
  eprint = {2604.13298},
  archivePrefix = {arXiv},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.13298}
}