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Automatic Application of Software Countermeasures Against Physical Attacks

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Cyber-Physical Systems Security

Abstract

While the number of embedded systems is continuously increasing, securing software against physical attacks is costly and error-prone. Several works proposed solutions that automatically insert protections against these attacks in order to reduce this cost and this risk of error. In this chapter, we present a survey of existing approaches and classify them by the level at which they apply the countermeasure. We consider three different levels: the source code level, the compilation level, and the assembly/binary level. We explain the advantages and disadvantages of each level considering different criteria. Finally, we encourage future works to take compilation into account when designing tools, to consider the problem of combining countermeasures, as well as the interactions between countermeasures and compiler optimisations. Going one step further, we encourage future works to imagine how compilation could be modified or redesigned to optimise both performance and security.

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Acknowledgements

This work was partially funded by the French National Research Agency (ANR) as part of the projects COGITO and PROSECCO, respectively funded by the programs INS-2013 under grant agreement ANR-13-INSE-0006-01 and AAP-2015 under grant agreement ANR-15-CE39.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Univ Grenoble Alpes, CEA, List, Grenoble, France

    Nicolas Belleville, Damien Couroussé, Thierno Barry, Abderrahmane Seriai & Henri-Pierre Charles

  2. Sorbonne University, CNRS, Laboratoire d’Informatique de Paris 6, LIP6, Paris, France

    Karine Heydemann

  3. CEA/EMSE, Secure Architectures and Systems Laboratory CMP, Gardanne, France

    Bruno Robisson

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  1. Nicolas Belleville
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  1. İstinye University, İstanbul, Turkey

    Çetin Kaya Koç

  2. Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing, China

    Çetin Kaya Koç

  3. University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, USA

    Çetin Kaya Koç

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Belleville, N. et al. (2018). Automatic Application of Software Countermeasures Against Physical Attacks. In: Koç, Ç.K. (eds) Cyber-Physical Systems Security. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98935-8_7

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