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Calibratable Polymorphic Temperature Sensor for Detecting Fault Injection and Side-Channel Attacks | IEEE Conference Publication | IEEE Xplore

Calibratable Polymorphic Temperature Sensor for Detecting Fault Injection and Side-Channel Attacks


Abstract:

Security of a computing system can be compromised by physical attacks against the hardware. Side-channel attacks involve the observation of integrated circuit (IC) or sys...Show More

Abstract:

Security of a computing system can be compromised by physical attacks against the hardware. Side-channel attacks involve the observation of integrated circuit (IC) or system behavior to extract assets such as cryptographic keys. Fault injection attacks involve the manipulation of underlying circuits to provoke erroneous operations that lead to the escalation of privilege or leakage of secret information. Some side-channel and fault injection attacks force circuits to work at temperatures out of operating range. Several countermeasures have been proposed to detect temperature change. However, they do not perform well in wide temperature fluctuations, have a large overhead area, or introduce other reliability concerns. This paper proposes a calibratable Null Convention Logic-based (NCL) polymorphic sensor that changes its functionality with temperature and can sense whether the temperature goes below or above a carefully designed application-specific threshold. It can be used with a wide range of process technologies without requiring significant modification. Low area overhead, low power consumption, configurable nature, and easy integration make it ideal for ICs. Our results show that this sensor can work at various temperature ranges with reliable operation with ± 1 0 C confidence, 8 μm2 area and 19.2 μW power overhead, which is approximately 40 x less overhead compared to alternative techniques.
Date of Conference: 06-09 May 2024
Date Added to IEEE Xplore: 06 June 2024
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ISSN Information:

Conference Location: Tysons Corner, VA, USA

I. Introduction

Embedded electronic devices are essential components of networked systems requiring strong cryptography to maintain data confidentiality and integrity. Despite such cryptographic primitives, the security of deployed de-vices can still be compromised by attackers, who gain access to them in hostile environments and launch physical attacks. Physical attacks pose a severe threat to the hardware implementation of any computing system. The most powerful tools in the arsenal of physical attacks are fault injection and side-channel attacks. Moreover, the advent of sophisticated temperature-based fault injection and side-channel attacks have added another dimension, unveiling the vulnerabilities posed by temperature variations on integrated circuits (ICs) and electronic devices [1]. Heating fault attacks [2] and temperature-assisted side-channel attacks [3] represent two distinct yet interrelated facets of exploiting temperature-induced weaknesses in hardware security. These attacks leverage the manipulation of temperatures to induce faults, trigger malfunctions, or extract sensitive information, like parts of the internal memory and cryptographic key from targeted devices [4], [5].

References

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