2020/01/03 by Karthikeyan Nagarajan, Nagarajan, Karthikeyan, Asmit De +5
Computer Science · Engineering · #Cryptography and Security (cs.CR) #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Hardware Architecture (cs.AR) #Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) and Hardware Security #Radiation Effects in Electronics #Security and Verification in Computing
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2001.00856
openalex publication_date 2020/01/03 · openalex created_date 2020/01/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
In this paper, we investigate the advanced circuit features such as wordline- (WL) underdrive (prevents retention failure) and overdrive (assists write) employed in the peripherals of Dynamic RAM (DRAM) memories from a security perspective. In an ideal environment, these features ensure fast and reliable read and write operations. However, an adversary can re-purpose them by inserting Trojans to deliver malicious payloads such as fault injections, Denial-of-Service (DoS), and information leakage attacks when activated by the adversary. Simulation results indicate that wordline voltage can be increased to cause retention failure and thereby launch a DoS attack in DRAM memory. Furthermore, two wordlines or bitlines can be shorted to leak information or inject faults by exploiting the DRAM's refresh operation. We demonstrate an information leakage system exploit by implementing TrappeD on RocketChip SoC.