A 286F2/cell distributed bulk-current sensor and secure flush code eraser against laser fault injection attack
Kohei Matsuda, Tatsuya Fujii, Natsu Shoji, Takeshi Sugawara, Kazuo Sakiyama, Yu‐ichi Hayashi, Makoto Nagata, Noriyuki Miura · 2018
A sense-and-react closed-loop countermeasure is proposed against Laser Fault Injection (LFI) attack on a cryptographic processor core. A 286F2/cell distributed bulk-current sensor detects laser injection by abnormal current conduction at bulk contacts. Upon the detection, a flush code eraser avoids exposure of laser-induced faulty ciphertext by shunting the core supply instantaneously at ns order. A protected AES core in 0.18μm CMOS successfully disables the LFI attack with only +28% area penalty.