Link-time smart card code hardening

This paper presents a feasibility study to protect smart card software against fault-injection attacks by means of link-time code rewriting. This approach avoids the drawbacks of source code hardening, avoids the need for manual assembly writing, and is applicable in conjunction with closed third-party compilers. We implemented a range of cookbook code hardening recipes in a prototype link-time rewriter and evaluate their coverage and associated overhead to conclude that this approach is promising. We demonstrate that the overhead of using an automated link-time approach is not significantly higher than what can be obtained with compile-time hardening or with manual hardening of compiler-generated assembly code.

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2016
• Where: IJISEC
• Authors: Ronald De Keulenaer, Jonas Maebe, Koen De Bosschere, Bjorn De Sutter
• Keywords: IJISEC 2016