@phdthesis{Petryk2024, author = {Petryk, Dmytro}, title = {Investigation of sensitivity of different logic and memory cells to Laser Fault Injections}, doi = {10.26127/BTUOpen-6664}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:co1-opus4-66647}, school = {BTU Cottbus - Senftenberg}, year = {2024}, abstract = {Plenty of semiconductor devices are developed to operate with private data. To guarantee data privacy cryptographic algorithms are used, where the secrecy is based on the used keys. Theoretically, the cryptographic algorithms using keys with recommended lengths are secure. The issue is that a potential attacker can steal the devices and attack in a lab. Physical attacks are usually aimed to perturb normal operation of a device and to extract cryptographic keys, e.g. by means of fault injection (FI). One class of FI attacks exploits the sensitivity of semiconductor devices to light and are performed using a laser as the light source. This work investigates the sensitivity of different logic and memory cells to optical Fault Injection attacks. Front-side attacks against cells manufactured in different IHP technologies were performed using two different red lasers controlled by Riscure software. To reach the repeatability of the experimental results and to increase the comparability of the results with attack results published in literature the setup parameters as well as setting parameters of the Riscure software were experimentally evaluated. Attacks were performed against inverter, NAND, NOR, flip-flop cells from standard libraries, radiation-hard flip-flops based on Junction Isolated Common Gate technique, radiation-tolerant Triple Modular Redundancy registers as well as non-volatile Resistive Random Access Memory (RRAM) cells. The results of attacks against volatile circuits were successful transient bit-set and bit-reset as well permanent stuck-at faults. The results of attacks against RRAM cells were successful in the sense that manipulation of all RRAM logic states was feasible. The faults injected during the performed experiments were repeatable and reproducible. The goal of this work was not only to achieve successful FI but also to determine cell area(s) sensitive to laser illumination. Knowledge about areas sensitive to laser illumination can be used by designers to implement corresponding countermeasure(s) at the initial stage of chip development and is the necessary step to design appropriate countermeasures. For example, metal fillers can be applied as optical obstacles reducing the success of front-side FI attacks, i.e. as a possible low-cost countermeasure. Based on the knowledge of the sensitive cell areas, the placement of the metal fillers can be automated in the future, i.e. the findings given in the work can serve as a basis for a methodology development for improving resistance against optical FI attacks at the initial stage of chip development. Such methodology can be adapted for each chip manufacturing technology.}, subject = {Laser fault injection attacks; Resistive random access memory; Cell sensitive areas; Radiation-hard cells; Countermeasure; Laserfehlerinjektion-Angriffe; Resistiver Direktzugriffsspeicher; Empfindliche Zellbereiche; Strahlungsharte Zellen; Gegenmaßnahme; Halbleiter; Speicherzelle; Datenschutz; Kryptologie; Algorithmus}, language = {en} }