Experimental FIA Methodology Using Clock and Control Signal Modifications under Power Supply and Temperature...

Area of Science:

• Electrical Engineering
• Computer Science
• Cryptography

Background:

• Cryptocircuit security relies on both mathematical and physical implementation aspects.
• Fault injection attacks, which induce malfunctions to reveal secret information, are a significant security threat.
• These attacks are also utilized by designers to identify and mitigate security vulnerabilities.

Purpose of the Study:

• To present and evaluate two distinct fault injection attack methodologies for cryptocircuits.
• To analyze the optimization of these attacks under varying supply voltage and temperature conditions.
• To experimentally validate the feasibility of these attacks on different Trivium implementations in 90 nm ASIC technology.

Main Methods:

• Fault injection via manipulation of the clock signal.
• Fault injection via manipulation of the control signal.
• Experimental evaluation on 90 nm ASIC implementations of Trivium, considering supply voltage, temperature, and routing variations.

Main Results:

• Both clock and control signal-based fault injection methodologies are effective in compromising cryptocircuit security.
• Fault injection efficiency is enhanced at lower power supply voltages.
• Reduced clock signal pulse frequency is sufficient for successful fault induction at lower voltages.

Conclusions:

• The proposed clock signal modification technique is applicable to other NLFSR-based cryptocircuits.
• The control signal-based methodology can be applied to both block and stream ciphers.
• Physical-level attacks remain a critical consideration for robust cryptocircuit design and security.