Title:

BitCrusher: Affordable, Open Source, Electromagnetic Fault Injection Platform

Electromagnetic Fault Injection (EMFI) uses a precise EM field to flip bits in a victim processor. In security research, this practice has been shown to be highly effective in defeating sophisticated security mechanisms, including firmware / hardware security systems, cryptography, and secure boot mechanisms. All of this is possible without tampering with the target device (de-lidding, transplanting, etc.), making it a particularly powerful form of fault injection. However, EMFI typically requires tens of thousands of dollars in scientific instruments to perform effectively, with more affordable EMFI platforms suffering reduced performance. This is troubling, since an obvious and powerful attack vector in nearly all processors is being left unscrutinized by the wider security community. BitCrusher is a fully open-source self-assembled EMFI platform that costs under $100 per unit, but meets the performance specifications of platforms 50 times its price. This device is intended to support open EMFI research by both providing researchers with an affordable and effective tool to perform it, and by contributing to the base of design research on EMFI platforms.

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