Conference papers 2020

Mist-Scan: A Secure Scan Chain Architecture to Resist Scan-Based Attacks in Cryptographic Chips

Authors:M. TaherifardH. BeitollahiF. JamaliA. NorollahA. Patooghy

Scan chains such as JTAG make chips testable and updatable in the field, but they also give attackers a side channel into crypto chips. Burning the chain after production is not an option for most products. Mist-scan detects scan-based attacks at runtime: authorised users get the real responses, while anyone else gets fake outputs and never reaches the sensitive data. We tested it on a DES implementation; read the paper to see how well it held up and what it costs in area.