Tunable Compact Probing Detector with Fast Analysis Time Against Invasive Attacks

The security-related information can be easily leaked by the invasive attacks including micro-probing, which can be potential threats. To prevent the targeted critical information from being leaked by the probe attempt, the secure shield as a protective layer is used on the topmost metal layer. The countermeasure method for detecting the micro-probing is usually conducted by comparing the timing asymmetries between two identical wires, which caused by the capacitance of the attached probe, and its hardware overhead and analysis time are linearly proportional to the increment of the number of wires to protect. In this paper, we propose a compact probing detector with fast analysis time against invasive attacks. The proposed method can also provide the tunable detection capability by adjusting the minimum detectable capacitance in order to counteract the latest available probes which can support the lower input capacitance.