FTC: A Universal Framework for Fault-Injection Attack Detection and Prevention

Abstract

Fault-injection attacks (FIAs) represent a wide-spread and potent method of compromising the integrity and confidentiality of integrated circuits (ICs) and electronic systems. These attacks include voltage/clock glitching, electromagnetic (EM) interference, laser, and optical injection. One promising defense strategy is intrusion detection, which uses sensors to monitor and capture the effects of such attacks. However, the diversity of these attacks has led to the development of specialized sensors for each attack type, posing challenges in terms of feasibility and overhead. This article introduces a universal solution for efficiently detecting prominent FIAs using a lightweight on-chip delay-based fault-to-time converter (FTC) sensor. The proposed sensor functions by translating the consequences of fault attacks into measurable “time” differentials. This design is readily implementable on both field-programmable gate array (FPGA) and application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) platforms. The sensor placement considers the most vulnerable elements in the design to fault attacks to position them closely to those locations for extracting the best sensitivity to delay changes. We illustrate the sensor’s responses to major FIAs, demonstrating its ability to differentiate between nominal and fault conditions. The overhead analysis also highlights the sensor’s minimal resource utilization in FPGA implementations. We also explore the sensor’s response to environmental variations for proper characterization.