SiliconToaster: A Cheap and Programmable EM Injector for Extracting Secrets

Electromagnetic Fault Injection (EMFI) is considered as an effective fault injection technique for the purpose of conducting physical attacks against integrated circuits. It enables an adversary to inject errors on a circuit to gain knowledge of sensitive information or to bypass security features. The aim of this paper is to highlight the design and validation of SiliconToaster, which is a cheap and programmable platform for EM pulse injection. It has been designed using low-cost and accessible components that can be easily found. In addition, it can inject faults with a programmable voltage up to 1.2kV without the need to an external power supply as it is powered by the USB. The second part of the paper invests the SiliconToaster in order to bypass the firmware security protections of an IoT chip. Two security configurations were bypassed sequentially in a non-invasive way (without chip decapsulation)