Abstract
The obfuscation of a combinational logic circuit using logic locking is
similar to symmetric cryptography and can be expressed in terms of a
quantified Boolean function. Satisfiability checking algorithms are used
to reveal the secret key of the logic locking (so-called SAT attacks).
In this paper, we analyze the impact of quantum computers for these
SAT-based attacks similar to the impact on symmetric cryptographic
ciphers. For the first time to our knowledge, we propose modifications
of existing logic locking schemes to achieve the same security level in
a post-quantum era. Furthermore, we investigate dedicated
countermeasures against SAT- based algorithms, suggest modifications and
evaluate their effectiveness against quantum attacks.