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VC Glitcher

Introduction

The VC Glitcher forms the heart of Inspector’s fault injec­tion architecture. Using ultra­fast FPGA technology this device can generate faults that are two nanoseconds short whilst its hardware can still be programmed by the user in an easy manner. The VC Glitcher has integrated circuitry for performing voltage and clock glitching and it has an output channel for controlling optical pulses on the Diode Laser Station.

 

Key features

Very powerful tests due to inte­ grated digital pattern generator that generates very short glitches using FPGA technology.

Good reproducibility of tests by accurate logging of smart card behaviour.

Card damage can be prevented using adjustable current limiter.

Easy to create any test scenario with the perturbation instruction set.

Reduction on testing time due to automated testing of a large set of perturbation parameters.

Consistent and complete pertur­bation testing to reach a high level of assurance.

Seamless integration with the Diode Laser Station and icWaves.

How to use VC Glitcher

VC Glitcher is designed to inject block glitches with programmable amplitude and duration. This enables the automated search for fault injection vulnerabilities by controlled or random variation of the glitch pattern with 2 nanoseconds resolution of glitch and pause duration. Using VC Glitcher, it is easy to create the ultimate fault injection test case for any smart card application.

Before a test run, the VC Glitcher loads a fault injection program on its FPGA. This program is transparently created by the user by configuring a set of parameters. Although Inspector offers several examples, new fault injection programs can also be created by the user using a wizard and a dedicated fault injection instruction set. This way the user can develop any new glitch program in a user friendly manner whilst the tool converts and loads the program onto the VC Glitcher hardware to perform high­ performance fault injection test runs.

Inspector integration

VC Glitcher is part of the Inspector FI version. The Diode Laser Station is the laser output extension of VC Glitcher. The triggering functionality of VC Glitcher can be extended by adding icWaves to inject faults based on a matching waveform.

Technical specifications

  • Adjustable fault injection parameters, including voltage, glitch pattern, skip cycles, glitch cycles, power level, pulse duration
  • FPGA fault injection instruction set with over 40 instructions
  • Digital pattern generator (i.e. glitch generator), patterns of 500 samples @ 500M samples/sec
  • Adjustable current limiter
  • Smart card connector

Dedicated CPU (FPGA technology):

  • 2kB data memory (512 × 32 bits) for storing communication with smart card and glitch parameters
  • 4kB instruction memory (2k × 16 bits) to store the low­level glitch program
  • Runs at 50 MHz

Input/output:

  • Glitch outputs (digital pulse, analogue pulse and power level for laser beam)
  • Monitor outputs for power consumption, VCC, RST, CLK and I/O signals
  • Trigger in, trigger out
  • Power down input (e.g. from icWaves)

Voltage specifications:

  • Min / max voltage VCC, CLK (excluding glitch): 0.0V/ +6.6V
  • Absolute min / max voltage VCC, CLK (including glitch): ­- 0.8V / +7.5V
  • Min / max glitch voltage: – 7.4V / +4.2V
 
 
 
 
 
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