Article: A dynamic active shield against shield rerouting attack Journal: International Journal of High Performance Computing and Networking (IJHPCN) 2016 Vol.9 No.5/6 pp.462 - 469 Abstract: An active shield is a sensor mesh devised and implemented on top of most secure chips or in a secure embedded system as a good protection for circuits and sensitive data stored in the chips. It is one of the most effective annoyances for microprobing attackers. But, a shield rerouting attack can defeat active shield by disclosing the geometry structure of the shield, and causing a short circuit of the sensor mesh. This paper proposes a dynamic active shield to resist the shield rerouting attack. A dynamic active shield is a sensor mesh which contains some routing nodes and connects metal lines between adjacent nodes. Changing the connection statuses of routing nodes results in different paths of the shield sensor mesh. The dynamic active shield increases the security of circuits and defeats the shield rerouting attack by changing the path of the sensor mesh every few clock cycles, making it more difficult to distinguish the geometry structure of the top layer sensor mesh. At last, we present security and performance analysis of dynamic active shield. Inderscience Publishers - linking academia, business and industry through research

Title: A dynamic active shield against shield rerouting attack

Authors: Ting Feng; Kenli Li; Yunchuan Qin; Siyang Yu

Addresses: College of Information Science and Engineering, Hunan University, Changsha 410000, Hunan, China ' College of Information Science and Engineering, Hunan University, Changsha 410000, Hunan, China ' College of Information Science and Engineering, Hunan University, Changsha 410000, Hunan, China ' College of Information Science and Engineering, Hunan University, Changsha 410000, Hunan, China

Abstract: An active shield is a sensor mesh devised and implemented on top of most secure chips or in a secure embedded system as a good protection for circuits and sensitive data stored in the chips. It is one of the most effective annoyances for microprobing attackers. But, a shield rerouting attack can defeat active shield by disclosing the geometry structure of the shield, and causing a short circuit of the sensor mesh. This paper proposes a dynamic active shield to resist the shield rerouting attack. A dynamic active shield is a sensor mesh which contains some routing nodes and connects metal lines between adjacent nodes. Changing the connection statuses of routing nodes results in different paths of the shield sensor mesh. The dynamic active shield increases the security of circuits and defeats the shield rerouting attack by changing the path of the sensor mesh every few clock cycles, making it more difficult to distinguish the geometry structure of the top layer sensor mesh. At last, we present security and performance analysis of dynamic active shield.

Keywords: dynamic active shield; physical attacks; invasive attacks; top layer sensor mesh; hardware security; shield rerouting attack; circuit security.

DOI: 10.1504/IJHPCN.2016.080419

International Journal of High Performance Computing and Networking, 2016 Vol.9 No.5/6, pp.462 - 469

Received: 30 Jul 2014
Accepted: 15 Nov 2014
Published online: 22 Nov 2016 *

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Title: A dynamic active shield against shield rerouting attack

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