System and method for triggering and detecting hardware trojans

A method for managing operation of a circuit includes activating a trigger engine, receiving signals from a target circuit, and detecting a hardware trojan based on the signals. The trigger engine may generate a stimulus to activate the hardware trojan, and the target circuit may generate the received signals when the stimulus is generated. The trigger engine may be a scan chain which performs a circular scan by shifting bit values through a series of flip-flops including a feedback path. The target circuit may be various types of circuits, including but not limited to a high-speed input/output interface. The hardware trojan may be detected based on bit-error rate information corresponding to the signals output from the target circuit.