Design principles for tamper-resistant smartcard processors

Abstract

We describe techniques for extracting protected software and data from smartcard processors. This includes manual microprobing, laser cutting, focused ion-beam manipulation, glitch attacks, and power analysis. Many of these methods have already been used to compromise widely-fielded conditional-access systems, and current smartcards offer little protection against them. We give examples of low-cost protection concepts that make such attacks considerably more difficult.