Chapter 15
Universal Fault Sensor
Over the past two decades, fault-injection methods have evolved into very effective attacks to cause integrity or confidentiality violations in integrated circuits or electronic systems. Fault-injection attacks (FIAs) can be carried out using clock-glitch, voltage glitch, laser, optical instruments, electromagnetic (EM) emanation, and more. One promising solution to detect FIAs is to use on-chip sensors to capture the attacks effect. However, having different types and techniques of FIAs enforces using the custom-designed sensors for each type of attack, which is challenging and introduces a large overhead. In this regard, there is a need for a lightweight and universal solution that can efficiently detect different FIAs. This chapter aims to help readers learn about a unique, unified, on-chip solution against FIAs. Further, we demonstrate how to implement a universal Fault-to-Time Converter (FTC) sensor in FPGA platforms and how it can effectively detect and differentiate various FIA attack scenarios.