Laser-Based Fault Injection on Microcontrollers

Laser attack benchmark suite

“…However, a physical laser fault injection attack is a complex and costly process. First, the chip has to be decapped, have the passivation layer removed, and the shielding needs to be circumvented using time consuming and labor intensive chemical or mechanical decapsulations [11,38], risking the chip to be damaged in the process. To achieve realistic accuracy, it requires expensive laser equipment that can match the technology of the processing chip.…”

“…Laser fault injection is one of the most powerful tools for generating active attacks. This is due to its high precision, timing accuracy and repeatability [11] [29]. Cryptographic algorithms proved to be mathematically secure, such as AES, can leak secret keys in the presence of laser irradiation, which allows the attackers to have access to conidential information, by, for example, skipping an instruction or directly injecting faults into intermediate data [10] [32] [33].…”

“…Hence, traditional post-fabrication security evaluation occurs too late in the design low [25]. Chip testing for security also involves expensive, highly sophisticated equipment for generating laser fault attacks, and requires skilled technicians to operate, and depackage the chip to be able to generate the attacks [11]. It is thus impractical to evaluate chip security against laser fault injection attacks only after fabrication.…”