The "Last Mile" of Security: Roman Korkikikan on Hacking TPMs with Budget Hardware
Presenters detail vulnerability discovery and exploitation in The "Last Mile" of Security: Roman Korkikikan on Hacking TPMs with Budget Hardware.
Summary
Attack cost
Roman Korkikian discusses hacking a TPM on budget edge-server hardware using custom sensing boards and used oscilloscopes, estimating total equipment under $2,000 rather than commercial lab gear.
Methodology
Side-channel and fault attacks are a last-mile option after software and protocol exploitation fail. He entered via cryptography/math, then specialized in power-analysis and voltage-fault techniques that break implementations, not algorithms.
TPM trust
The talk argues you cannot always trust TPMs; concrete device implementations may leak keys through physical analysis even when the crypto primitives remain sound.
Mitigation reality
Firmware updates can add masking, blinding, and randomization, but hardware-only flaws may require chip replacement, and certification cycles can delay fixes by years even after disclosure.
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