Embedded systems are vulnerable to physical attacks. Among these attacks, some are more tightly coupled to the physical characteristics of the silicon technologies. Fault injection is one of it, and is seen as a major threat in embedded systems. It enables the corruption of a memory, the modification of the control flow of an application, or the recovery of a secret key. As a contemporary technology known for its power management capabilities, FD-SOI technologies are now widely deployed in embedded systems (health, automotive, connectivity, banking, smart industry, identity, etc.). Their security is more and more crucial as the cybersecurity threats on connected objects.

Being secure as resistant to fault injection attacks is still a key challenge. Extensive experimental data are still missing to understand what happen during a fault injection in FD-SOI technologies. Enhancing our knowledge and modelling fault injection will benefit the design of protections.

At CEA Leti we have designed an ASIC in FD22X technology that is dedicated to security characterisation. This target is ready to be studied in our Laser Fault Injection (LFI) and Electromagnetic Fault Injection (EMFI) benches. This component is microcontroller with a 32b RISC V processor. The objective of the internship is to process experimental campaigns of fault injection on this component. The student will have to contribute to the definition of the campaign and to implement the experiment on the microcontroller and on our benches (LFI and EMFI).

The candidate should have knowledge in embedded systems and microelectronics. Knowledge in Hardware Security is a strength that would be highly appreciated.

Where:                Gardanne (EC SAS CEA Leti / Mines Saint Etienne)

Laboratory:         Laboratory of Components Security (LSCO)

Start Date:           6 months internship (Bac +5). February/March/April 2025