Devices and methods for the detection and localization of fault injection attacks

Abstract

A device for detecting perturbation attacks performed on a digital circuit is provided. The device comprises: a first metallic layer and a second metallic layer arranged on the digital circuit, the first metal layer comprising a plurality of signal transmission lines routed horizontally, the second metal layer comprising a plurality of signal transmission lines routed vertically, the device comprising one or more transmitter buffers and one or more receiver buffers, a transmitter buffer and a receiver buffer being connected by each signal transmission line; a random number generator configured to generate random signal values; the device further comprising a transmitter manager connected to one or more transmitter buffers and a receiver manager connected to one or more receiver buffers, wherein: the transmitter manager is configured to transmit random signal values generated by the random number generator over the signal transmission lines of the first metallic layer and the second metallic layer, the receiver manager is configured to receive random signal values from the transmitter manager through the one or more receiver buffers connected to the receiver manager, measure a transmission time corresponding to a time of transmission of the received random signal values, and compare the transmission time to a predefined timing interval to detect perturbation attacks.