Adaptive systems and procedures for defending a processor against transient fault attacks

Abstract

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.