Introduction to fault attacks on smartcard

Abstract

We present what can be achieved by attacks through faults induction on smart cards. We first describe the different means to perform fault attacks on chips and explain how fault attacks on cryptographic algorithms are used to recover secret keys. We next study the impact of fault attacks when focused on the disruption of the functional software layer. We conclude with the overall impact of this type of attacks on the smartcard environment and the need for software countermeasures and their limits.