From IC debug to hardware security risk: The power of backside access and optical interaction

Boit, Christian; Tajik, Shahin; Scholz, Philipp; Amini, Elham; Beyreuther, Anne; Lohrke, Heiko; Seifert, Jean-Pierre

doi:10.1109/ipfa.2016.7564318

Cited by 28 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…Hence, novel protection mechanisms for the IC backside should be researched. One potential physical protection could be the utilization of different coating layers on the silicon substrate, which can reflect the incoming photons from a set of light sources to set of light detectors [15]. In this structure, to unblock the optical path from transistors, the coating layers must be removed from the silicon substrate.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the Physical Security of Physically Unclonable Functions

Tajik

2019

T-Labs Series in Telecommunication Services

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the Physical Security of Physically Unclonable Functions

Tajik

2019

T-Labs Series in Telecommunication Services

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“…4) Optical Resolution: The optical resolution of laserassisted side-channel techniques has been discussed extensively by the research community in numerous publications, e.g., in [4], [21], [45]- [48]. Nonetheless, we discuss the most important and new insights in the following.…”

Section: B Applicability Of Llsimentioning

confidence: 99%

Trojan Awakener: Detecting Dormant Malicious Hardware Using Laser Logic State Imaging

Krachenfels¹,

Seifert²,

Tajik³

2021

Preprint

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The threat of hardware Trojans (HTs) and their detection is a widely studied field. While the effort for inserting a Trojan into an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) can be considered relatively high, especially when trusting the chip manufacturer, programmable hardware is vulnerable to Trojan insertion even after the product has been shipped or during usage. At the same time, detecting dormant HTs with small or zero-overhead triggers and payloads on these platforms is still a challenging task, as the Trojan might not get activated during the chip verification using logical testing or physical measurements. In this work, we present a novel Trojan detection approach based on a technique known from integrated circuit (IC) failure analysis, capable of detecting virtually all classes of dormant Trojans. Using laser logic state imaging (LLSI), we show how supply voltage modulations can awaken inactive Trojans, making them detectable using laser voltage imaging techniques. Therefore, our technique does not require triggering the Trojan. To support our claims, we present two case studies on 28 nm SRAM-and flash-based field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). We demonstrate how to detect with high confidence small changes in sequential and combinatorial logic as well as in the routing configuration of FPGAs in a non-invasive manner. Finally, we discuss the practical applicability of our approach on dormant analog Trojans in ASICs.

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“…Due to the increasing number of metal layers on the frontside of integrated circuits (ICs), optical FA techniques have been developed to access on-chip signals through the backside [40]. The main techniques are photon emission analysis, laser stimulation, and optical probing, which take advantage of the high infrared transmission of silicon for wavelengths above 1 µm.…”

Section: B Optical Backside Failure Analysis Techniquesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Real-World Snapshots vs. Theory: Questioning the t-Probing Security Model

Krachenfels,

Ganji,

Moradi

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Due to its sound theoretical basis and practical efficiency, masking has become the most prominent countermeasure to protect cryptographic implementations against physical sidechannel attacks (SCAs). The core idea of masking is to randomly split every sensitive intermediate variable during computation into at least t+1 shares, where t denotes the maximum number of shares that are allowed to be observed by an adversary without learning any sensitive information. In other words, it is assumed that the adversary is bounded either by the possessed number of probes (e.g., microprobe needles) or by the order of statistical analyses while conducting higher-order SCA attacks (e.g., differential power analysis). Such bounded models are employed to prove the SCA security of the corresponding implementations. Consequently, it is believed that given a sufficiently large number of shares, the vast majority of known SCA attacks are mitigated.In this work, we present a novel laser-assisted SCA technique, called Laser Logic State Imaging (LLSI), which offers an unlimited number of contactless probes, and therefore, violates the probing security model assumption. This technique enables us to take snapshots of hardware implementations, i.e., extract the logical state of all registers at any arbitrary clock cycle with a single measurement. To validate this, we mount our attack on masked AES hardware implementations and practically demonstrate the extraction of the full-length key in two different scenarios. First, we assume that the location of the registers (key and/or state) is known, and hence, their content can be directly read by a single snapshot. Second, we consider an implementation with unknown register locations, where we make use of multiple snapshots and a SAT solver to reveal the secrets.

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From IC debug to hardware security risk: The power of backside access and optical interaction

Cited by 28 publications

References 11 publications

On the Physical Security of Physically Unclonable Functions

On the Physical Security of Physically Unclonable Functions

Trojan Awakener: Detecting Dormant Malicious Hardware Using Laser Logic State Imaging

Real-World Snapshots vs. Theory: Questioning the t-Probing Security Model

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