Contact-to-Silicide Probing Attacks on Integrated Circuits and Countermeasures
Physical assaults are now being used to retrieve sensitive data on integrated circuits (ICs) in smart cards, cellphones, military, medical, and financial systems. Bypassing, rerouting, or deactivating security components such as validation and encryption blocks, these assaults can be carried out from either the front side (upper metal) or the back of the device. Several defenses have been studied; however, they only guard against frontside attacks, leaving the backside vulnerable. To avoid malicious data harvesting, the researchers suggest a unique backside shield system design with just an estimated 16 percent area overhead that ends die operations due to probing. The suggested backside preventative measure adds to the difficulty of the assault on shielded material.