Synchronized Attacks on Multithreaded Systems - Application to Java Card 3.0 -

Abstract

Up to now devices in charge of performing secure transactions mainly remained limited regarding their functionalities. However the trend has recently gone towards an increasing integration of features and technologies, which could potentially represent a source of additional threats. This article introduces an innovative attack exploiting advanced functionalities and offering unrivalled opportunities. This attack targets specifically the multithreaded systems featuring network capabilities. By the way of a network flooding we show how a process can be interrupted at the precise time a sensitive operation is being executed. This interruption aims at subsequently modifying the execution context and consequently breaking the sensitive operation. The practical feasibility of this attack is illustrated on a Java Card 3.0 Connected Edition platform. This description reveals that going through with the full attack scenario is not obvious. However this apparent complexity must not conceal the potential breach, which may significantly alter any application running on the system. Finally the goal of this work is to emphasize that the increasing products complexity may generate new security issues rather than to highlight a specific weakness on released products.

Embedded Eavesdropping on Java Card

“…In both cases we can use the result presented in [21], exploiting I/O flooding to force a thread scheduling at a specific time. As a consequence, the attacker finds herself in the situation described in Section 2.1 where she can access the APDU buffer almost whenever she pleases.…”

Technologies and Innovation

“…} temporary data. In both cases we can use the result presented in [21], exploiting I/O flooding to force a thread scheduling at a specific time. As a consequence, the attacker finds herself in the situation described in Section 2.1 where she can access the APDU buffer almost whenever she pleases.…”

Tampering with Java Card Exceptions - The Exception Proves the Rule

“…The fault injection aims at disrupting mechanism enforcing these rules and the malicious application exploits the provoked breach. Since then, many Combined Attacks have been published to attack several vital points of a Java Card such as the APDU buffer, the application firewall or the operand stack for instance (Vétillard and Ferrari, 2010;Barbu et al, 2010;Barbu and Thiebeauld, 2011;Barbu et al, 2012b;Barbu et al, 2012a).…”