Detecting Electromagnetic Injection Attack on FPGAs Using In Situ Timing Sensors

Nowadays, security is one of the foremost concerns as the confidence in a system is mostly dependent on its ability to protect itself against any attack. The area of Electromagnetic Fault Injection (EMFI) wherein attackers can use electromagnetic (EM) pulses to induce faults has started garnering increasing attention. It became crucial to understand EM attacks and find the best countermeasures. In this race to find countermeasures, different researchers proposed their ideas regarding the generation of EM attacks and their detection. However, it is difficult to see a universal agreement on the nature of these attacks. In this work, we take a closer look at the analysis of the primary EMFI fault models suggested earlier. Initial studies had shown that EM glitches caused timing violations, but recently it was proposed that EM attacks can create bit sets and bit resets. We performed a detailed experimental evaluation of the existing detection schemes on two different FPGA platforms. We present their comparative design analysis concerning their accuracy, precision, and cost. We propose an in situ timing sensor to overcome the disadvantages of the previously proposed detection approaches. This sensor can successfully detect most of the electromagnetic injected faults with high precision. We observed that the EM attack behaves like a localized timing attack in FPGAs which can be identified using the in situ timing sensors.

Name thesis:degree_name

MS

Level thesis:degree_level

masters

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Computer Engineering

Department dc:contributor.department

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Grantor dc:publisher

Virginia Tech

Year dc:date.issued

2018

Author dc:creator

• Gujar, Surabhi Satyajit

Chair dc:contributor.committeechair

• Nazhandali, Leyla

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Abbott, A. Lynn
• Schaumont, Patrick R.

• Hardware Security
• Field programmable gate arrays
• Electromagnetic Injection
• Fault Attacks

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Dc Identifier Other

vt_gsexam:16937

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/97006