Physical Attacks on Secure Systems

• The presentation introduces the concept and importance of physical attacks on secure systems.
• It addresses why these attacks are important, who an adversary might be, and whether these attacks are relevant to the industry.

The Lecture Covers

• The reasons physical attacks are important.
• Identifying potential adversaries.
• Basic vocabulary related to physical attacks.
• The industry's perspective on physical attacks.

Why Protect Against Physical Attacks

• Physical attacks are powerful and can have devastating consequences.
• Side channel attacks can recover cryptographic keys, recover Neural Network (NN) training data, and reverse engineer code.
• Fault injection can recover cryptograhic keys, modify memory contents, modify register contents, and alter the sequence of executed instructions.
• In certain industries, resilience against physical attacks is mandated.

The Adversary

• The adversary, referred to as "TOM," embodies three key actions: Tamper, Observe, Modify.
• Tamper: Obtain access to the hardware, seeking evidence, resistance, or proof.
• Observe: Identify components and side channels.
• Modify: Read restricted data and bypass security checks.

Side Channel Analysis Setups

• Side-channel analysis setup for power analysis includes: Oscilloscope, target, power supply and current probe.
• Side-channel analysis setup for electromagnetic analysis includes Langer EM probe, target Decapped, XYZ station, and Riscure EM probe.

Side Channel Evaluations

• Side channel evaluations include unprofiled, profiled attacks, and leakage detection.
• Unprofiled attacks' goal is to attack.
• Profiled attacks' goal is to attack.
• Leakage detection's goal is to evaluate.

Software vs Hardware implementations

• Security evaluation service is motivated by the need to sell a product, protect against future damage, gain competitive advantage, and produce secure devices for customer safety.

Common Criteria

• Security certification demonstrates a product meets given security requirements.
• Certification regulates market access for areas like payment and content protection.
• Different security evaluation standards are available.
• Cost-effective due to recognition of certificates, pre-defined security requirements, and evaluation methodology with considerations like industry, product type, security needs, and location.
• Vendor liability is a consideration.

History & Influence of Common Criteria

• Common Criteria originated in 1994 involving France, Germany, the Netherlands, and the UK.
• By 2022, Certificate authorizing members included: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Malasia, Netherlands, New Zeeland, Norway, Korea, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, USA
• Certificate consuming members include: Austria, Czeck Republic, Denmark, Ethiopia, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Indonesia, Israel, Pakistan, Poland, Qatar, Slovak Republic, UK
• There is a separation of roles between evaluator and certifier.
• The vendor is the sponsor for the evaluation.

Objectives of Common Criteria Evaluation

• To ensure IT product evaluations meet high standards, boosting confidence in their security.
• To improve availability security-enhanced IT products and protection profiles.
• To eliminate duplications in IT product evaluations.
• To enhance the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of the certification/validation process.
• Objectives of CC evaluation has certified CC products per category end of 2022 including; trusted computing, products for digital signatures, other devices and systems, operating systems, network and network-related devices and systems, Multi-Function Devices, etc.
• Common Criteria certificates are public.
• A CC certificate from Qualcomm includes; Security features of the target, components, evaluation facility etc.

Common Criteria Evaluations

• A CC certificate does not guarantee security, by ensures claims about security are independently verified.
• Merits: White-box evaluations, attack-based evaluation, recognized multiple markets, and vetted evaluation labs.
• Criticism: Static, a lot of documentation, and expensive.
• CC certificate can only be withdrawn when issued under misconception, not if a vulnerability is found.

EMV Chip

• Europay Mastercard Visa - First published in 1996
• EMVchip has three key elements: perform processing, store confidential information securely, and perform cryptographic processing.
• EMV certification has keywords like secure composability, chip, OS, and application.
• Certified by accredited labs.
• Manufacturers sponsor evaluations.
• Certification bodies are private companies.
• Online payment world has the chip & pin becoming obsolete.
• Beyond EMV chip needs support for different integrated payment methods, and includes mobile payment,payment tokenization, wearables, EMV3D, etc.
• Technology evolves: HCE, TEE, etc.
• Secure storage of credentials is hardware related.

Conclusions

• Security certification regulates evaluation and testing in the security industry.
• Security certifications exist in complex eco-systems.
• Some schemes do not look at the final product, but the development process.
• The challenges ahead: technology shifts, costs, unclear impact because of attacks, white/grey-box evaluation, and scoring of attacks is subjective expert interpretation.