BAM BAM!! On Reliability of EMFI for in-situ Automotive ECU Attacks

Electromagnetic Fault Injection (EMFI) is a well-known technique for performing fault injection attacks. While such attacks may be easy demonstrated in a laboratory condition, information about the applicability of them to real-life environments is critical for designer of ECUs to understand the effort that should be spent on protecting against them. This work targets a recent (2019) automotive ECU, and analyzes the target microcontroller used in laboratory conditions, and then transitions the attack to a real-world “in-situ” attack similar to a garage bench. The specific work appears relevant to several devices in the MPC55xx and MPC56xx series, which are automotive-focused PowerPC devices