Malicious key emission via hardware Trojan against encryption system

Abstract

In this work, we propose a hardware Trojan within a given encryption platform. This malicious hardware aims at leaking the secret key used for encryption without perturbing the system so that the user does not notice it. We propose a hardware Trojan which detects any new encryption start and then transmit the used expended key on the system serial link. This hardware Trojan does not require any processor modification. The paper presents the way the hardware Trojan has been developed according the given platform and the associated information. This work has been developed by Grenoble INP students (M. Augagneur, Y. Clauzel and J. Dubeuf) during the secure IC design labs of the Grenoble INP Esisar and was then presented for the Embedded System Challenge during the Cyber Security Awareness Week (CSAW) 2011 organized by Polytechnic Institute of New York University.