Nanofocused X-ray beam to reprogram secure circuits
| Description | |
| Date | |
| Authors | Anceau S., Bleuet P., Clédière J., Maingault L., Rainard J.-L., Tucoulou R. |
| Year | 2017-0042 |
| Source-Title | Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics) |
| Affiliations | University of Grenoble Alpes, Grenoble, France, CEA, LETI, MINATEC Campus, Grenoble, France, ESRF, The European Synchrotron, 71 Avenue des Martyrs, Grenoble, France |
| Abstract | Synchrotron-based X-ray nanobeams are investigated as a tool to perturb microcontroller circuits. An intense hard X-ray focused beam of a few tens of nanometers is used to target the flash, EEPROM and RAM memory of a circuit. The obtained results show that it is possible to corrupt a single transistor in a semi-permanent state. A simple heat treatment can remove the induced effect, thus making the corruption reversible. An attack on a code stored in flash demonstrates unambiguously that this new technique can be a threat to the security of integrated circuits. © International Association for Cryptologic Research 2017. |
| Author-Keywords | ATmega, Circuit edit, EEPROM, Flash, MOS Stuck-At, RAM, X-ray |
| Index-Keywords | Cryptography, Flash memory, Hardware, Random access storage, Timing circuits, X rays, ATmega, Circuit edit, EEPROM, Flash, Focused beams, Secure circuits, Semi permanents, Single transistors, Embedded systems |
| ISSN | 3029743 |
| Link | Link |