NON-INVASIVE METHOD OF TESTING THE FLASH MEMORY OF THE MICROCONTROLLER. AVAILABILITY AND VULNERABILITY OVER THE POWER CONSUMPTION CHANNEL

On the example of an 8-bit single-chip general-purpose microcontroller, the possibility of organizing access to flash memory via the power consumption channel is investigated. The degree of importance of the problem of ensuring the integrity of confidential information stored in the flash memory of microprocessor devices is indicated. Theoretical and practical aspects of the procedure for obtaining and analyzing data on the power supply voltage of the device under test are considered. Various dependences of the pulse amplitude that occurs at the time of performing the operation of reading a number from memory on the specific configuration of the set bits of the read single-byte value are identified and analyzed. Based on the results of the conducted research, a conclusion is made about the invulnerability of the tested microcontroller, and the necessary conditions are described for the possibility of full or partial recovery of the flash memory contents using access via the power consumption channel. In general terms, the key provisions of the future microcontroller testing methodology to determine the degree of their vulnerability to flash memory data extraction are formulated.

Authors: K. K. Kondrashov, A. O. Gasnikov, V. V. Luchinin

Direction: Informatics, Computer Technologies And Control

Keywords: Non-invasive analysis, microcontroller, flash memory, power consumption

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