In recent years, there has been a notable surge in attention towards hardware security, driven by the increasing complexity and integration of processors, SoCs, and third-party IPs aimed at delivering advanced solutions. However, this complexity also introduces vulnerabilities and bugs into hardware systems, necessitating early detection during the IC design cycle to uphold system integrity and mitigate re-engineering costs. While the Design Verification (DV) community employs dynamic and formal verification strategies, they encounter challenges such as scalability for intricate designs and significant human intervention, leading to prolonged verification durations. As an alternative approach, hardware fuzzing, inspired by software testing methodologies, has gained prominence for its efficacy in identifying bugs within complex hardware designs. Despite the introduction of various hardware fuzzing techniques, obstacles such as inefficient conversion of hardware modules into software models impede their effectiveness. This Systematization of Knowledge (SoK) initiative delves into the fundamental principles of existing hardware fuzzing, methodologies, and their applicability across diverse hardware designs. Additionally, it evaluates factors such as the utilization of golden reference models (GRMs), coverage metrics, and toolchains to gauge their potential for broader adoption, akin to traditional formal verification methods. Furthermore, this work examines the reliability of existing hardware fuzzing techniques in identifying vulnerabilities and identifies research gaps for future advancements in design verification techniques.

翻译：近年来，随着处理器、系统级芯片以及第三方知识产权核为实现先进解决方案而不断增加的复杂度和集成度，硬件安全领域引起了显著关注。然而，这种复杂性也为硬件系统引入了漏洞和缺陷，需要在集成电路设计周期中尽早检测，以维护系统完整性并降低重新工程设计的成本。尽管设计验证领域采用了动态和形式化验证策略，但在应对复杂设计的可扩展性以及大量人工干预方面仍面临挑战，导致验证周期延长。作为一种替代方法，受软件测试技术启发的硬件模糊测试，因其在识别复杂硬件设计中的漏洞方面的高效性而日益受到重视。尽管已有多种硬件模糊测试技术被提出，但硬件模块向软件模型的低效转换等问题仍制约着其有效性。本知识系统化（SoK）工作深入探讨了现有硬件模糊测试的基本原理、方法论及其在不同硬件设计中的适用性。此外，本研究还评估了黄金参考模型、覆盖率指标及工具链等因素，以衡量其像传统形式化验证方法一样获得更广泛应用的潜力。最后，本文考察了现有硬件模糊测试技术在识别漏洞方面的可靠性，并指出了未来设计验证技术发展中的研究空白。