Attacker model validation for laser-based attacks on integrated circuits

Thesis topic details

General information

Organisation

The French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) is a key player in research, development and innovation in four main areas :
• defence and security,
• nuclear energy (fission and fusion),
• technological research for industry,
• fundamental research in the physical sciences and life sciences.

Drawing on its widely acknowledged expertise, and thanks to its 16000 technicians, engineers, researchers and staff, the CEA actively participates in collaborative projects with a large number of academic and industrial partners.

The CEA is established in ten centers spread throughout France
  

Reference

SL-DRT-25-0698  

Direction

DRT

Thesis topic details

Category

Technological challenges

Thesis topics

Attacker model validation for laser-based attacks on integrated circuits

Contract

Thèse

Job description

The security of embedded systems is nowadays a fundamental issue in many domains: IoT, Automotive, Aeronautics, among others. The physical attacks are a specific threat assuming a physical access to the target. In particular, fault injection attacks on the integrated circuits (IC) allows to disturb the system in order to retrieve secret material or to achieve a special goal such as by passing secure boot to execute malicious code. Due to their powerful capacities to defeat system security, developers must protect their system against such attack to be compliant with security standards such as Common Criteria and FIPS.

Within the context of continuous downscaling of silicon technologies, and with the transition to FD-SOI technologies, the vulnerability model of an IC must be drastically revised, from the transistor level up to the complex digital circuits one. In this PhD we propose to study the attacker model validation in the at the latter level. The objective is to contribute to the definition of a model of vulnerability after synthesis-of a RTL description of a circuit (for example a core processor) in a 22 nm FD-SOI technology. These models will contribute to define the attacker model injected as input in formal-based verification tools. The candidate will have to define a methodology to characterize with laser experiments the multilayer and heterogenous models in order to provide a quantitative analysis of their limit of validity. The methodology will be tested on ASIC realized by CEA for R&D projects allowing having a full control and knowledge of the architecture, of the design and synthesis parameters and the executed codes.

University / doctoral school

Sciences, Ingénierie, Santé (EDSIS)
Université de Lyon

Thesis topic location

Site

Grenoble

Requester

Position start date

01/09/2025

Person to be contacted by the applicant

CARMONA Mikael mikael.carmona@cea.fr
CEA
DRT/DSYS/SSSEC/LSOSP
CEA-Léti DSYS
MINATECH Campus
17 avenue des Martyrs
38054 Grenoble
0438785438

Tutor / Responsible thesis director

DUTERTRE Jean-Max dutertre@emse.fr
Ecole des Mines de Saint-Etienne
SAS
Centre de Micro-électronique de Provence,
880 route de Mimet
13120 Gardanne
0442616736

En savoir plus


https://www.leti-cea.fr/cea-tech/leti/Pages/recherche-appliquee/infrastructures-de-recherche/plateforme-cybersecurite.aspx
https://www.mines-stetienne.fr/recherche/centres-et-departements/systemes-et-architectures-securises-sas/