Document Type

Article

Journal/Book Title/Conference

IEEE Embedded Systems Letters

Volume

10

Issue

4

Publisher

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

Publication Date

12-13-2017

First Page

115

Last Page

118

Abstract

In this letter, we explore the emerging security threats of near-threshold computing (NTC). Researchers have shown that the delay sensitivity of a circuit to supply voltage variation tremendously increases, as the circuit's operating conditions shift from traditional super-threshold values to NTC values. As a result, NTC systems become extremely vulnerable to timing fault attacks, jeopardizing trustworthy computing. Inspired by the operation of a polymorphic virus, we propose a novel threat model for NTC, referred to as a focally induced fault attack (FIFA). FIFA employs a machine learning framework to ascertain the circuit vulnerabilities and generates targeted software modules to cause a breach of end-user privacy. Our experimental results, obtained from a rigorous machine learning approach, indicate the efficacy of FIFA, in a low-power mobile platform.

Comments

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