Handbook of FPGA Design Security by Ted Huffmire Cynthia Irvine Thuy D. Nguyen Timothy Levin Ryan Kastner & Timothy Sherwood

Handbook of FPGA Design Security by Ted Huffmire Cynthia Irvine Thuy D. Nguyen Timothy Levin Ryan Kastner & Timothy Sherwood

Author:Ted Huffmire, Cynthia Irvine, Thuy D. Nguyen, Timothy Levin, Ryan Kastner & Timothy Sherwood
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht


3.1.3 Physical Attacks

The intentional insertion of malicious inclusions into circuits makes it possible to subsequently mount attacks on those circuits (vulnerabilities may also exist in hardware due to unintentional design flaws). In a physical attack, the attacker has physical control of the device. Attacks may be sorted into one of three categories: non-invasive, semi-invasive, and invasive, which describe the degree of physical intrusion to the target system. For example, if the attacker has physical control over a smart card terminal, a non-invasive side channel attack against a smart card in the terminal is possible. Such an attack may use simple power analysis, differential power analysis, or fault injection against the crypto circuitry to obtain crypto keys, since the smart card relies on the power supplied by the terminal. Power analysis attacks are also possible on FPGAs [34]. Side channel attacks that involve removing the packing but not physically altering or damaging the chip are considered to be semi-invasive attacks. Removing the packaging can make it easier to analyze the electromatic radiation emitted by the chip. An example of an invasive attack is the sand-and-scan attack in which the passivation layers of an integrated circuit are systematically removed and scanned by an electron microscope [7]. Chemicals, lasers, or focused ion beams can be used to remove the layers. Another example of an invasive physical attack is the use of chemical solvents to remove the packaging from a smart card and then using a probing station to probe the bus traffic. A very sophisticated physical attack involves the use of a focused ion beam workstation to chemically drill through the potting material surrounding a smart card and then laying down metal shunts to probe a processor without disturbing the tamper-resistant mesh surrounding it.

Design Tip: Tamper Resistance, Bitstream Encryption, and Determined Adversaries. Given sufficient resources, an adversary can overcome tamper resistance techniques. Amateurs learned how to defeat smart card tamper resistance mechanisms in order to watch satellite TV for free [6]. Your risk assessment should consider differential power analysis attacks against the bitstream detection mechanism. A thorough security evaluation of the bitstream decryption mechanisms of different vendors is useful information when selecting an FPGA platform.



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