When clocks fail: on critical paths and clock faults

  • Authors:
  • Michel Agoyan;Jean-Max Dutertre;David Naccache;Bruno Robisson;Assia Tria

  • Affiliations:
  • Centre microélectronique de Provence G. Charpak, Département SAS, CEA-LETI, Gardanne, France;Centre microélectronique de Provence G. Charpak, Département SAS, École nationale supérieure des Mines de Saint-Étienne, Gardanne, France;Centre microélectronique de Provence G. Charpak, Département SAS, CEA-LETI, Gardanne, France;Centre microélectronique de Provence G. Charpak, Département SAS, CEA-LETI, Gardanne, France;Centre microélectronique de Provence G. Charpak, Département SAS, CEA-LETI, Gardanne, France

  • Venue:
  • CARDIS'10 Proceedings of the 9th IFIP WG 8.8/11.2 international conference on Smart Card Research and Advanced Application
  • Year:
  • 2010

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Abstract

Whilst clock fault attacks are known to be a serious security threat, an in-depth explanation of such faults still seems to be put in order. This work provides a theoretical analysis, backed by practical experiments, explaining when and how clock faults occur. Understanding and modeling the chain of events following a transient clock alteration allows to accurately predict faulty circuit behavior. A prediction fully confirmed by injecting variable-duration faults at predetermined clock cycles. We illustrate the process by successfully attacking an fpga aes implementation using a dll-based fpga platform (one-bit fault attack).