Qualcomm Incorporated

David Tamagno

John Keith Schneider

Laurence Geoffrey Lundblade

Fitzgerald John Archibald

Olivier Jean Benoit

Vincent Pierre Le Roy

Baranidharan Muthukumaran

Techniques for providing data protection in an integrated circuit are provided. An example method according to these techniques includes determining that an unauthorized update has been made to software or firmware associated with the integrated circuit, and corrupting an anti-replay counter (ARC) value, maintained in a one-time programmable memory of the integrated circuit and used by the integrated circuit to protect contents of a non-volatile memory, responsive to determining that the unauthorized update has been made to the software or the firmware.

Integrated circuit data protection

Techniques for authenticating a biometric input are disclosed. An example of a biometric authentication system is configured to receive a biometric input, perform a first authentication process on the biometric input with an application processor, such that the first authentication process generates one or more authentication parameters, provide the one or more authentication parameters to a secure processor, perform a second authentication process on the biometric input on the secure processor, such that the second authentication process utilizes the one or more authentication parameters, and output an authentication score based on the second authentication process.

Managing latency and power in a heterogeneous distributed biometric authentication hardware

Various features pertain to defending a smartphone processor or other device from a transient fault attack. In one example, the processor is equipped to detect transient faults using a fault detection system and to adaptively adjust a control parameter in response to the transient faults, where the control parameter controls a physical operation of the processor (such as by gating its clock signal) or a functional operation of the fault detection system (such as a particular Software Fault Sensor (SFS) employed to detect transient faults). In some examples, in response to each newly detected fault, the detection system is controlled to consume more processor time to become more aggressive in detecting additional faults. This serves to quickly escalate fault detection in response to an on-going attack to promptly detect the attack so that the device can be disabled to prevent loss of sensitive information, such as security keys or passcodes.

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Livermore, CA, United States of America

David Tamagno