Probing attacks are serious threats on integrated circuits. Security products often include a protective layer called shield that acts like a digital fence. In this article, we demonstrate a new shield structure that is cryptographically secure. This shield is based on the newly proposed SIMON lightweight block cipher and independent mesh lines to ensure the security against probing attacks of the hardware located behind the shield. Such structure can be proven secure against state-of-the-art invasive attacks. For the first time in the open literature, we describe a chip designed with a digital shield, and give an extensive report of its cost, in terms of power, metal layer(s) to sacrifice and of logic (including the logic to connect it to the CPU). Also, we explain how "Through Silicon Vias" (TSV) technology can be used for the protection against both frontside and backside probing.Index Terms-Cryptographically secure shield, SIMON block cipher, Focused Ion Beam (FIB), Through Silicon Vias (TSV).
Abstract. 3D integration is a promising advanced manufacturing process offering a variety of new hardware security protection opportunities. This paper presents a way of securing 3D ICs using Hamiltonian paths as hardware integrity verification sensors. As 3D integration consists in the stacking of many metal layers, one can consider surrounding a securitysensitive circuit part by a wire cage.After exploring and comparing different cage construction strategies (and reporting preliminary implementation results on silicon), we introduce a "hardware canary". The canary is a spatially distributed chain of functions Fi positioned at the vertices of a 3D cage surrounding a protected circuit. A correct answer (Fn • . . . • F1)(m) to a challenge m attests the canary's integrity.
Recently, some active shielding techniques have been broken (e.g. by FlyLogic). The caveat is that their geometry is easy to guess, and thus they can be bypassed with an affordable price. This paper has two contributions. First of all, it provides a definition of the objectives of shielding, which is seldom found in publicly available sources. Notably, we precise the expected functionality, but also the constraints it must meet to be both manufacturable and secure. Second, we propose an innovative solution based on random shielding. The goal of this shielding is to make the geometry of the shield difficult to recognize, thereby making the "identification" phase of the attack harder than in previous schemes. Also, a proof of the shielding existence for two layers of metal is provided, which guarantees that the generation of the layout will succeed. Finally, we provide real tests of the shield generation algorithm, that show it is computationally tractable even for large areas to protect.
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