Author's Latest Posts


Securing The SoC Life Cycle


Over the course of its life, an SoC (system on chip) goes through multiple life cycle states which are different in character and have varying and sometimes contradictory security requirements. In each state, the SoC may be under different ownership in the supply chain. Also, as it transitions through different manufacturing phases, it is subject to a different set of possible attacks, which sh... » read more

FIAs Pose Tricky Security Attacks


Voltage and clock glitching are terms crowding into the emerging lexicon of chip security attacks. These are two popular methods adversaries use that can be categorized under the umbrella of fault injection attacks (FIAs). Micro-architectural vulnerabilities like Meltdown, Spectre, Foreshadow and Spoiler have been in the limelight for months. But now, FIAs are getting more attention as the indu... » read more

Evaluating Side-Channel Vulnerabilities


By Bart Stevens and Gary Kenworthy In a book chapter titled “Security of Crypto IP Core: Issues and Countermeasures,” authors Debapriya Basu Roy and Debdeep Mukhopadhyay recently explored various side-channel vulnerabilities that can be exploited by an attacker. “An adversary can observe the power consumption, timing performance, electromagnetic radiation or even acoustic behavior o... » read more

Bypassing Encryption With Side-Channel Attacks


Devices and systems that implement robust encryption/decryption algorithms using cryptographic keys were historically considered secure. Nevertheless, there is a category of attacks that simply ignore the mathematic properties of a cryptographic system – and instead focuses on its physical implementation in hardware. This vector is known as side-channel attacks, which are commonly referred... » read more

Thwarting Side-Channel Attacks With DPA-Protected Software Libraries


All physical electronic systems routinely leak information about the internal process of computing via fluctuating levels of power consumption and electro-magnetic emissions. Much like the early days of safecracking, electronic side-channel attacks (SCA) eschew a brute force approach to extracting keys and other secret information from a device or system. Moreover, SCA conducted against elec... » read more

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