Don't Whisper My Chips: Sidechannel and Glitching for Fun and Profit

Architecture and Background

If you thought the security practices of regular software was bad, just wait until you start learning about the security of embedded hardware systems. Recent open-source hardware tools have made this field accessible to a wider range of researchers, and this presentation will show you how to perform these attacks for equipment costing $200.

Vulnerability Analysis

Attacks against a variety of real systems will be presented: AES-256 bootloaders, internet of things devices, hardware crypto tokens, and more. All of the attacks can be replicated by the attendees, using either their own tools if such equipped (such as oscilloscopes and pulse generators), the open-hardware ChipWhisperer-Lite, or an FPGA board of their own design.

Exploitation and Demonstrations

The hands-on nature of this talk is designed to introduce you to the field, and give you the confidence to pick up some online tutorials or books and work through them. Even if you've never tried hardware hacking before, the availability of open-source hardware makes it possible to follow published tutorials and learn all about side-channel power analysis and glitching attacks for yourself.

Remediation and Defensive Strategies

Colin O'Flynn has been working with security on embedded systems for several years. He has designed the open-source ChipWhisperer project which won 2nd place in the 2014 Hackaday Prize, and developed an even lower-cost version called the ChipWhisperer-Lite, which was the focus of a Kickstarter in 2015.