Standard CAD Tool-Based Method for Simulation of Laser-Induced Faults in Large-Scale Circuits

Abstract

Designing secure integrated systems requires methods and tools dedicated to simulating -at early design stages-the effects of laserinduced transient faults maliciously injected by attackers. Existing methods for simulation of laser-induced transient faults do not take into account IR drop effects that are able to cause timing failures, abnormal reset, and sram flipping. This paper proposes a novel standard cad tool-based method allowing to simulate laser-induced faults in large-scale circuits. Thanks to a power-grid network modeled by a commercial IR drop cad tool, an additional transient current component causing laser-induced IR drop is taken into consideration. This current component flows from v DD to g ND and may have a significant effect on the fault injection process. The method provides fault sensitivity maps that enable a quick assessment of laser-induced fault effects on the circuit under analysis. As shown in the results, the number of induced faults is underestimated by a factor as large as 3.1 if laser-induced IR drop is ignored. This may lead to incorrect estimations of the fault injection threshold, which is especially relevant for the design of countermeasure techniques for secure integrated systems. Simulation times regarding four different circuits are also presented in the results section.

Laser attack benchmark suite

“…Laser fault injection attacks rely on parasitic currents generated by laser shots [21] that produce undesired transient voltage, propagating through the logic which can potentially invert bits at the inputs of registers [40]. In Table 1, we outline the characteristics of the three basic levels of laser fault injection attack simulation techniques.…”

“…The time duration for the AES and deep learning attack by Breier et al, and AES attack by Giraud et al is the simulation time needed to get the results shown in Figure 4, Figure 6 and Figure 5 respectively. A previous work [40] proposes the state-of-the-art layout-based laser fault simulation that models faults injected by a laser at electrical level, which is at a lower level than logical level used in this work, and simulates non afected cells with gate level accuracy. Modelling laser faults at a lower level of abstraction is an alternative way to get a more realistic result, but takes a lot longer to simulate.…”

“…Modelling laser faults at a lower level of abstraction is an alternative way to get a more realistic result, but takes a lot longer to simulate. From the data in [40], one laser shot can take one to six minutes to calculate induced faults. In Figure 6, 7 faults have to be injected into the Rocket core running the neural network program for each sample, meaning that 1050 laser shots are required to attack the core to test every sample.…”

“…Laser-Induced Fault Simulation Methodology. The authors in [40] propose a layout-based laser fault simulation modelled at the electrical level. This work uses standard commercial CAD tools, and takes into account IR drop efects.…”