TDM: Time and Distance Metric for Quantifying Information Leakage Vulnerabilities in SoCs

Protecting assets against information leakage is crucial to ensure System-on-Chip (SoC) security. This paper introduces a Time and Distance-based security metric (TDM) to assess information leakage risks across hardware Intellectual Properties (IPs) in SoC architectures. TDM quantifies both asset exposure time and spatial proximity to external threats, identifying vulnerable locations and critical timings. Using graph-based analysis, we map data flow, evaluating risk based on how long and how closely sensitive data resides near output ports. Applied to five open-source designs, TDM effectively enhances SoC security by measuring susceptibility to threats.