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How microprobing can attack encrypted memory

Accepted version
Peer-reviewed

Type

Conference Object

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Authors

Skorobogatov, Sergei  ORCID logo  https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9414-6489

Abstract

This paper exposes some weaknesses of encrypted embedded memory in secure chips. Smartcards and secure microcontrollers are designed to protect confidential internal information. For that they widely employ on-chip memory encryption. Usually both data and address buses are encrypted to prevent microprobing attacks. This paper shows how practical such attacks can be on real chips and whether memory encryption is as good as it is supposed to be. It was possible to extract the whole memory from a secure 8-bit microcontroller with as little as 8 probing needles. This paper questions the usual belief in that ion-doping-encoded and encrypted Mask ROM is ultimately secure. Implications for 16-bit and 32-bit microcontrollers are discussed as well. Some common weaknesses are exposed and possible countermeasures are discussed.

Description

Keywords

microprobing attacks, glitching attacks, memory encryption, ROM, EEPROM and Flash memory

Journal Title

2017 Euromicro Conference on Digital System Design (DSD)

Conference Name

Euromicro Conference on Digital System Design

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

IEEE Computer Society