High Level Fault Injection for Attack Simulation in Smart Cards

Abstract

Smart cards are one of the smallest computing platforms in use today. They are used in an increasing number of security applications. To gain sensitive data, a lot of security attacks are performed on smart cards. Therefore it is mandatory to test smart cards for robustness in matters of security. Tests are very time consuming and are performed often very late in the design process. This paper presents a methodology for high-level fault injection for security attack simulation in smart cards. The fault injection technique into SystemC designs is described and the fault injection tool is presented. Moreover, the system behaviour analysis is depicted. Preliminary results show that this methodology can assist in finding system components vulnerable to security attacks.