Hardware Security

HWSec
Abstract

Abstract

This course offers a survey of several well-known attacks targeting specific weaknesses of electronic devices (smart cards, computers, dedicated hardware cryptographic accelerators…) It shows how attackers can exploit the computation time, the power consumption, the electromagnetic emissions and other “side-channels” of a running system to retrieve embedded secrets like passwords or secret keys, that would otherwise remain inaccessible.

It also presents attacks based on injecting faults (using lasers, voltage or clock spikes…) to force a system to compute erroneous results, and on exploiting these erroneous results to retrieve secrets.

For each type of attack the conditions of success are explained and countermeasures are proposed.

 

Teaching and Learning Methods

Lectures, exercises, laboratory sessions, homework..

 

Course Policies

Attendance to the lab sessions is mandatory.

Bibliography
  • Bibliography

    ·         Book: GOODSPEED T. Microcontroller exploits, No Starch Press, 2024, 408 p.

    -        Online book: ZAJIC A. PRVULOVIC M. Understanding analog side channels using cryptography ·algorithms, Springer, 2023, 467 p.

    ·         Book: KATZ J., LINDELL Y. Introduction to modern cryptography, Chapman & Hall, 2021, 648 p.

    ·         Book: SKLAVOS N. Hardware security and trust, Springer, 2017, 254 p.

    ·         Book: VACCA J.R. Computer and information security handbook, Morgan Kaufmann, 2017, 1237 p.

    ·         Book: MUKHOPADHYAY D., CHAKRABORTY R.S. Hardware security: Design, threats, and safeguards, CRC Press, 2015, 556 p.

    Book: MANGARD S., OSWALD E., POPP T. Power analysis attacks: Revealing the secrets of smart cards. Springer-Verlag, 2007, 338p.

Requirements

Prerequisites

Basic knowledge in C or Python programming (data types, control structures...) for the laboratory sessions.

Description
  • Description

    ·         Side-channel attacks: how monitoring computation time or power consumption can reveal secrets.

    ·         Fault attacks: how erroneous results (accidental or purposely provoked) can reveal secrets.

    ·         Passive and active bus probing: how sniffing communications between hardware components can reveal secrets; how injecting forged data on these communication links can lead to privilege escalation and compromise a secured system.

    ·         The lectures and exercises are complemented by two lab sessions during which students experiment the efficiency of hardware attacks and try to protect the security target with appropriate countermeasures.

    https://perso.telecom-paristech.fr/pacalet/HWSec/

Learning Outcomes

·         Understand how the statistical exploitation of data-dependent side channels (computation time, power consumption…) or of erroneous results can reveal secrets.

·         Be able to list the hypotheses that must hold for an attack to succeed, and to use this to design countermeasures.

Be able to evaluate the efficiency of attacks (cost, time, probability of success) and countermeasures. 

Duration CE

Total

Lect.

Lab.

Prob.

Project

Perso.

25

15

6

 

 

4

Evaluation

Two hours final exam with documents: 100% of final grade.