From Low-Level Fault Modeling (of a Pipeline Attack) to a Proven Hardening Scheme
Sébastien Michelland, Christophe Deleuze, Laure Gonnord · 2024
Fault attacks present unique safety and security challenges that require dedicated countermeasures, even for bug-free programs. Models of these complex attacks are made workable by approximating their effects to a suitable level of abstraction. The common practice of targeting the Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) level isn't ideal because it discards important micro-architectural information, leading to weaker security guarantees. Conversely, including micro-architectural details makes countermeasures harder to model and reason about, creating a new challenge in validating and trusting protections.