Countermeasures against physical security attacks on ICs utilizing on-chip wideband ADCs

Abstract

Cryptographic ICs on edge devices for internet-of-things applications are exposed to potential attacks and threatened by malicious side-channel analysis. On-chip analog monitoring by sensor circuits embedded inside the chips is one of the possible countermeasures against such attacks. An on-chip monitor circuit consisting of a successive approximation register analog-to-digital converter and an input buffer acquires a wideband signal, which enables one to detect irregular noise due to an active fault injection or a passive side-channel leakage analysis. In this paper, several countermeasures against security attacks utilizing wideband on-chip monitors are reviewed. Each technique is implemented on a prototype chip, and the measurement results prove they can effectively detect and diagnose security attacks.