An FPGA-compatible PLL-based sensor against fault injection attack

Abstract

Laser based Fault Injection (LFI) and Electromagnetic Fault Injection (EMFI) are powerful techniques commonly for fault injection against security critical circuits. Since LFI/EMFI creates faults by incurring high energy disturbances, they can be detected in advance by sensing the disturbance using a embedded detector. In this paper, a PLL based sensor system for detecting laser fault injection is presented. Experiments show a high detection rate, with significant power security margin, whilst maintaining low hardware cost, on multiple FPGA platforms.