Exploiting Hardware Errors
Stc
Date: 2007-03-15
Time:
11.00
Room: BBL room 471
Speaker: Wouter den Breejen
Title: Exploiting hardware errors
Abstract
Computers and other similar devices that contain sensitive
information need to be protected physically. It is
rather straightforward if they are in a controlled environment. However,
this is not always the case. There are a considerable number of devices
like smart-cards, consoles and PC's that are used by untrusted people
and therefore need to be protected against 'undesired' behavior.
Such devices can be reverse engineered using chip testing equipment, but
a semiconductor laboratory can cost millions. In this talk, I describe a
number of attacks that can be mounted by opponents with much shallower
pockets. I will show a few examples of this: 1) I show how to take over
a Java virtual machine, and 2) How to obtain a private RSA key as a
result of memory errors. 3) I also show how to induce instruction misses
at critical execution moments by using power analysis and glitches.
Finally, I will talk about some soft and hardware countermeasures.
