(Adversarial) Electromagnetic Disturbance in the Industry

Abstract

Faults occur naturally and are responsible for reliability concerns. Faults are also an interesting tool for attackers to extract sensitive information from secure chips. In particular, non-invasive fault attacks have received a fair amount of attention. One easy way to perturb a chip without altering it is the so-called Electromagnetic Fault Injection (EMFI). Such attack has been studied in great depth, and nowadays, it is part and parcel of the state-of-the-art. Indeed, new capabilities have emerged where EM experimental benches are used to cryptanalyze chips. The progress of this "field" is fast, in terms of reproducibility, accuracy, and number of use-cases. However, there is too little awareness about such advances. In this paper, we aim to expose the true harmfulness of EMFI (including reproducibility) to enable reasonable security quotations. We also analyze protections (at hardware/firmware/system levels) in light of their efficiency. We characterize the specificity of EM fault injection compared to other injection means (laser, glitch, probing).

Experimental Evaluation of Delayed-Based Detectors Against Power-off Attack

“…These techniques can be based on redundancy at different levels or techniques based on the use of sensors. The advantage of using redundancy is that it makes it possible to detect faults independently of the FI technique, but the main disadvantage of this method is that this technique cannot capture all possible faults [11]. The second technique is to use fault detection sensors, also known as detectors.…”

Harmonic Response of Ring Oscillators under Single ElectroMagnetic Pulsed Fault Injection

“…A variety of techniques, such as laser beams, EM emissions, power or clock glitches and heat have been applied to various devices and have been proven effective in bypassing security features (e.g., password checks), extracting confidential information and gaining unauthorized access [1]. Among these techniques, EM Fault Injection (EMFI) has been pointed out as one of the most effective ways to inject faults into digital circuits because of its relatively good accuracy, reasonable cost and no need for chip decapsulation [2]. Thus, designers should assess the vulnerability of their devices to EMFI very early and understand the behavior of the whole system in the presence of faults to define and validate appropriate countermeasures at the hardware and software levels.…”