Hardware reverse engineering tools: New threats and opportunities

Presented at REcon 2013, June 22, 2013, 6 p.m. (60 minutes)

Over the past decade (hardware) piracy has evolved significantly. In the past, attackers could perform analysis with simple methods for injecting transient faults, such as electrical glitching. More recently, such forms of analysis have been obsoleted by advanced invasive analysis techniques that utilize capital-intensive failure analysis equipment and require extensive technical skills. One such technique, laser glitching, has recently been included into Common Criteria evaluations.

Presenters:

  • Olivier Thomas
    For the past 8 years, Oliver THOMAS was the team leader of a high-tech laboratory focused on embedded and IC security. There he primarly refined techniques for semi and fully invasive IC analysis. His expertise in Failure Analysis techniques and equipment, combined with his former experience working as a desginer at a semiconductor manufacturer, helped him develop new forms of analyzing embedded devices by focusing on vulnerabilities in the hardware. Currently, he is working on frameworks to provide evaluation labs and chip manufacturers with the high end tools that will help in fighting piracy and counterfeiting. He is the founder and a security concultant at Texplained SARL. I am Olivier THOMAS, owner and manager of Texplained SARL in France. I have been working for 8 years in hardware reverse engineering. As i always had a lab to perform analysis, i am well aware of every aspect of this kind of work and i am keeping busy trying to create new ways for investigating and improving chip security. I am currently developing what will be an IDA for hardware reverse engineering. I am well aware that having such a software is a threat (piracy) but I strongly believe that this tool will help both manufacturers and security evaluation labs to improve their evaluations and development

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