Lock-in Thermography for the Localization of Security Hard Blocks on SoC Devices

Abstract Localizing security-relevant hard blocks on modern System-on-Chips for physical attacks, such as side-channel analysis and fault attacks, has become increasingly time-consuming due to ever-increasing chip-area and -complexity. While this development increases the effort and reverse engineering cost, it is not sufficient to withstand resolute attackers. This paper explores the application of camera-based lock-in thermography, a nondestructive testing method, for identifying and localizing security hard blocks on integrated circuits. We use a synchronous signal to periodically activate security-related functions in the firmware, which causes periodic temperature changes in the activated die areas that we detect and localize via an infrared camera. Using this method, we demonstrate the precise detection and localization of security-related hard blocks at the die level on a modern SoC.