Evaluation with Virtual Prototyping and Static Analysis of the Security of Hardware and Software Systems against Laser Attacks

Laser allows attackers to realize very efficient attacks which threaten the security of digital systems [FA06]. These attacks consist in using a laser to inject errors at specific times targeting specific components in the digital system. This digital system is a hardware architecture which executes a software application. The injected errors can then be propagated or masked, both by the hardware and the software parts of the system. The errors which are propagated can generate security breaches. Security certifications experimentally verify the vulnerabilities of the hardware part and of the application the system executes against different types of attacks (including the laser ones). To pass these certifications it is necessary to anticipate from the early design step the design of countermeasures (hardware and/or software) against these attacks. In fact, late modifications increase the system costs and its time to market.