International audienceWhilst clock fault attacks are known to be a serious security threat, an in-depth explanation of such faults still seems to be put in order. This work provides a theoretical analysis, backed by practical experiments, explaining when and how clock faults occur. Understanding and modeling the chain of events following a transient clock alteration allows to accurately predict faulty circuit behavior. A prediction fully confirmed by injecting variable-duration faults at predetermined clock cycles. We illustrate the process by successfully attacking an fpga aes implementation using a dll-based fpga platform (one-bit fault attack)

This note describes laser fault experiments on an 8bit 0.35µm microcontroller with no countermeasures. We show that reproducible single-bit faults, often considered unfeasible, can be obtained by careful beam-size and shot-instant tuning.