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Tsinghua Science and Technology 2023, 28(2): 244-257 https://doi.org/10.26599/TST.2021.9010094
Open Access | Issue | Published: 29 September 2022

Arm PSA-Certified IoT Chip Security: A Case Study

Show Author's Information Fei Chen1,  Duming Luo1,  Jianqiang Li1( ),  Victor C. M. Leung1,2( ),  Shiqi Li3,  Junfeng Fan3
College of Computer Science and Software Engineering, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen 518060, China
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4, Canada
Open Security Research, Inc., Shenzhen 518000, China
Keywords:
Internet of Things (IoT) security chip, Arm Platform Security Architecture (PSA) certification, electromagnetic side-channel attack, Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) encryption, key leakage
Cite this article:
Chen F, Luo D, Li J, et al. Arm PSA-Certified IoT Chip Security: A Case Study. Tsinghua Science and Technology, 2023, 28(2): 244-257. https://doi.org/10.26599/TST.2021.9010094
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Abstract Full text About this article

With the large scale adoption of Internet of Things (IoT) applications in people’s lives and industrial manufacturing processes, IoT security has become an important problem today. IoT security significantly relies on the security of the underlying hardware chip, which often contains critical information, such as encryption key. To understand existing IoT chip security, this study analyzes the security of an IoT security chip that has obtained an Arm Platform Security Architecture (PSA) Level 2 certification. Our analysis shows that the chip leaks part of the encryption key and presents a considerable security risk. Specifically, we use commodity equipment to collect electromagnetic traces of the chip. Using a statistical T-test, we find that the target chip has physical leakage during the AES encryption process. We further use correlation analysis to locate the detailed encryption interval in the collected electromagnetic trace for the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) encryption operation. On the basis of the intermediate value correlation analysis, we recover half of the 16-byte AES encryption key. We repeat the process for three different tests; in all the tests, we obtain the same result, and we recover around 8 bytes of the 16-byte AES encryption key. Therefore, experimental results indicate that despite the Arm PSA Level 2 certification, the target security chip still suffers from physical leakage. Upper layer application developers should impose strong security mechanisms in addition to those of the chip itself to ensure IoT application security.


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About this article

Arm PSA-Certified IoT Chip Security: A Case Study

Show Author's information Fei Chen1, Duming Luo1, Jianqiang Li1( ), Victor C. M. Leung1,2( ), Shiqi Li3, Junfeng Fan3
College of Computer Science and Software Engineering, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen 518060, China
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4, Canada
Open Security Research, Inc., Shenzhen 518000, China

Abstract

With the large scale adoption of Internet of Things (IoT) applications in people’s lives and industrial manufacturing processes, IoT security has become an important problem today. IoT security significantly relies on the security of the underlying hardware chip, which often contains critical information, such as encryption key. To understand existing IoT chip security, this study analyzes the security of an IoT security chip that has obtained an Arm Platform Security Architecture (PSA) Level 2 certification. Our analysis shows that the chip leaks part of the encryption key and presents a considerable security risk. Specifically, we use commodity equipment to collect electromagnetic traces of the chip. Using a statistical T-test, we find that the target chip has physical leakage during the AES encryption process. We further use correlation analysis to locate the detailed encryption interval in the collected electromagnetic trace for the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) encryption operation. On the basis of the intermediate value correlation analysis, we recover half of the 16-byte AES encryption key. We repeat the process for three different tests; in all the tests, we obtain the same result, and we recover around 8 bytes of the 16-byte AES encryption key. Therefore, experimental results indicate that despite the Arm PSA Level 2 certification, the target security chip still suffers from physical leakage. Upper layer application developers should impose strong security mechanisms in addition to those of the chip itself to ensure IoT application security.

Keywords: Internet of Things (IoT) security chip, Arm Platform Security Architecture (PSA) certification, electromagnetic side-channel attack, Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) encryption, key leakage

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Received: 28 July 2021
Revised: 12 December 2021
Accepted: 13 December 2021
Published: 29 September 2022
Issue date: April 2023

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© The author(s) 2023.

Acknowledgements

This work was partially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 61872243 and U1713212), Guangdong Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation (No. 2020A1515011489), the Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province-Outstanding Youth Program (No. 2019B151502018), and Shenzhen Science and Technology Innovation Commission (No. R2020A045).

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