Idea: Embedded Fault Injection Simulator on Smartcard
Résumé
Smartcard implementations are prone to perturbation attacks that consist in changing the normal behavior of components in order to create exploitable errors. Perturbation attacks could be realized by different means such as laser beams involving costly and complex injection platforms. In the context of black box or grey box evaluation, there is a strong necessity of identifying fault injection vulnerabilities in developed products. This is why we propose to integrate the injection mechanism straight into the smartcard project. The embedded fault simulator program is thus integrated with the chip software and its effects can be analyzed by side-channel observations, which is not the case with any existing fault simulators. In this paper, we present this new concept and its architectural design. We show then how to implement the simulator on a real smartcard product. Finally, to validate this approach, we study the functional and side-channel impact of fault injection on a standard algorithm provided by the host smartcard.