Practical Optical Fault Injection on Secure Microcontrollers
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In this paper, we detail the latest developments regarding optical fault injection on secure microcontrollers. On these targets, a combination of countermeasures makes fault injection less than trivial. We develop fault injection methods to show experimentally that protected smart cards are still vulnerable. We perform power signal guided fault injection, using a triggering mechanism based on real-time pattern recognition. Furthermore, the use of jitter-free diode lasers shows current countermeasures may be inadequate for the near future.
This paper covers the following information:
- Background on fault injection
- Common countermeasures found in modern secure microcontrollers
- Fault injection hardware needed to theoretically overcome these countermeasures
- Experimental results
- Final remarks