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TPS2596: Voltage glitch attack

Jose Manuel Vidal Rico15
Intellectual 526 points
Part Number: TPS2596

Hello

As you know, voltage glitch attack (VGA) is a fault injection technique that exploits deliberately abrupt variation of the voltage level at the power supply of a CC. Voltage glitches can lead to misinterpreting instructions of (crypto-) processor, failure to erase or overwrite data or retaining data from memory when not instructed.

In general I want to protect my MSP430 powered at 3.3V from this type of attack. I was searching some kind of bidirectional TVS, eFuse or also some multiphase voltage regulator (MPVR) or a combination of them...

But to be honest I am not sure is this is going to work or not in order to avoid VGA. Do you recomend me some circuit or IC to implement that?

Thanks in advance.

Jose.

  • 0
    TI__Guru 50335 points

    Hi Jose,

    Since transient can be negative , we can't apply it directly to efuse since efuse are   meant to be  operated at positive voltage . I think the first level of protection should be a bidirectional TVS. Generally what are the specs of these glitches, like slew rate,  voltage range? I think the way to approach would be think about what possible shapes of glitch can cause your processor to not work as intended like skipping assembly instructions.

    Regards

    Kunal Goel

  • 0
    Intellectual 526 points

    Hello Kunal,

    Thanks for your swift reply.

    Good question about what are the specs. In that case depend on MSP430 uC. Do you check what kind of voltage glitch attack make a failure in MSP430? Normaly it are a few docens or handred of ns. You can see this paper with MSP430 uC

    https://tches.iacr.org/index.php/TCHES/article/view/7390

    In general, could you recomend me some components and/or circuit that avoid this kind of glitch.

    Thanks in advance.

    Jose.

  • 0 in reply to Jose Manuel Vidal Rico15
    TI__Guru 50335 points

    Hi Jose,

    Sorry, my expertise is around efuse. I am assigning this thread to MSP team to provide further help on this.

    Regards

    Kunal Goel

  • 0 in reply to Jose Manuel Vidal Rico15
    TI__Mastermind 26420 points

    Hello Jose,

    This is an interesting concept.  I've actually never heard of active Voltage glitch fault injection attacks, only passive monitoring attacks, so thanks for making me aware.  

    First question, What specifically is the asset you are hoping to protect?   MSP430 specifically aren't usually high-security devices, so there is not to much focus on advanced side-channel attacks.  If it's just device access, maybe we can look at integrated Debug security enablers. 

    Along that line, What is the attack vector that you are imagining?  It sounds like this would be a physical attack, in which case the attacker has gained access to the PCB.  If so, couldn't they just bypass an external device to gain direct access to the MSP430 VCC lines anyway?  

    Overall, I can't think of any devices currently to recommend but maybe understanding this scenario better we can come up with something.  

    Thanks,

    JD