EM attack sensor

Abstract

Smart Card 1234 5678 9012 SMART IC CARD 3456 Mobile Defense Vehicle Server Hardware Security Fig.1 Current existing application field of hardware security. Smart Card 1234 5678 9012 SMART IC CARD 3456 Mobile Defense Vehicle Server Hardware Security Smart Card 1234 5678 9012 SMART IC CARD 3456 Smart Card 1234 5678 9012 SMART IC CARD 3456 1234 5678 9012 SMART IC CARD 3456 Mobile Mobile Defense Vehicle Vehicle Server Hardware Security Hardware Security Fig.1 Current existing application field of hardware security.A side-channel attack exploiting EM-field leakage from a cryptographic processor IC is an existing serious threat to our information society. EM radiation during the IC operation is captured by an EM probe and the correlation to the crypto processing is statistically analyzed to reveal the secret information although it is protected in a software (algorithm) domain. This paper presents a reactive hardware (implementation) domain countermeasure against this EM attack, namely EM attack sensor. An on-chip sensor coil detects EM probe approach and reacts to protect the secret information from the tamper attack. The sensor concept and low-cost digital circuit implementation are reviewed, and the detail of the design-automation methodology highlycompatible to standard EDA tools is presented. A small hardware overhead of the sensor is silicon-proven in an actual 0.18m CMOS test-chip implementation together with a 128bit AES crypto core. The test-chip measurements demonstrate successful sensor operation against the actual EM probe attack.Cryptographic processing is one of the mandatory tools to preserve the information security and privacy. Recent advanced cryptographic algorithms can significantly enhance the security level and the data protection capability is mathematically proven safe in a software (algorithm) domain. However the security hole is often found in a hardware (implementation) domain. The malicious attacker can exploit some physical hardware-related information to break the code. Since all the cryptographic processing is by necessity performed in a hardware IC chip, hardware security would finally be an essential technical challenge.

Era of Sentinel Tech: Charting Hardware Security Landscapes Through Post-Silicon Innovation, Threat Mitigation and Future Trajectories

“…Both FIAs and EMSCA have gained widespread popularity due to their simplicity and cost-effectiveness. Recent research has explored circuitlevel countermeasures for EMSCA [263], detection circuits for probing approaches [264], and architectures for detecting FIAs [265]. Identification of EM probes via capacitive asymmetry sensing has gained prominence [266], utilizing an on-chip sensing loop through Ansys HFSS-based simulation framework for EM analysis, and a straightforward H-probe detection [267].…”