Secure Compiler Framework to Design Fault Attack Resistant Software

Fault injection attacks are a potent class of physical attacks where an injected fault during the execution of a cryptosystem is exploited to retrieve the secret key. The success of the fault attack depends on the software implementation and the underlying hardware. While there are several tools to detect vulnerable locations, none of them consider all the influencing aspects that, include the cipher algorithm, its implementation, and the underlying hardware. In this paper, we propose a three-stage secure compiler framework that automatically identifies exploitable instructions, quantifies exploitability, and adds countermeasures. It can enable tradeoffs based on performance requirements and the user's security requirements. We demonstrate the versatility of the framework by evaluating nine different block cipher implementations.