NDSS 2025 – LLMPirate: LLMs For Black-box Hardware IP Piracy

This post summarizes an NDSS 2025 paper, LLMPirate, which introduces an LLM-driven technique to generate pirated variants of hardware circuit designs that evade multiple state-of-the-art IP piracy detection tools; evaluated with eight LLMs against four detectors, it achieved 100% evasion on tested circuits and includes case studies on IBEX and MOR1KX processors and a GPS module, highlighting the need for improved hardware IP protection and detection.