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Securing Software against Physical Attacks

Objective

More than 15 years ago, several seminal publications showed that cryptographic keys can be revealed by analysing the power consumption or by inducing faults to devices like smart cards. The publication of these so-called physical attacks sparked off research on all kinds of attack techniques and countermeasures to secure implementations of cryptographic schemes.

However, a system can still be attacked easily if only the execution of cryptographic schemes is secured. An attacker can for example induce a fault to bypass an authentication or to jump to a privileged function directly. The system might also leak the key before the execution of a cryptographic scheme starts.

Today, there is almost no research on securing systems and software execution against physical attacks. Products like smart cards rely on proprietary best-practice countermeasures. Also countless devices of the Internet of Things are exposed to physical attacks and lack protection.

Our goal is to close this fundamental gap in system security and to establish the scientific foundation for executing software securely and efficiently in the presence of physical attacks. We aim to address research questions that range from the modelling of the attacks at the hardware level up to system-level questions like how changing properties of programming languages can support achieving protection against physical attacks.

This project brings together research on physical attacks, cryptography, system architectures, fault tolerant design as well as formal methods. Combining the fields, we pursue novel approaches to securing the control flow, CPU computations and memories. We in particular aim to find efficient methods in hardware and software that allow building systems where critical parts of the overall software can be secured against physical attacks without affecting or trusting the rest of the system. Our research also includes automated generation and verification techniques for the secured software.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.

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Programme(s)

Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.

Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

ERC-COG - Consolidator Grant

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Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

(opens in new window) ERC-2015-CoG

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Host institution

TECHNISCHE UNIVERSITAET GRAZ
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 1 964 750,00
Address
RECHBAUERSTRASSE 12
8010 Graz
Austria

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Region
Südösterreich Steiermark Graz
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 1 964 750,00

Beneficiaries (1)

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