Hardware Security Breaches: Alarming Exploits Beyond Tampering

Side Channel Attacks (SCAs) and Fault Injection Attacks have emerged as significant threats to the security of electronic devices. This paper explores these hardware attack vectors in the context of recent incidents [11] involving pagers and walkie-talkies. We shall deep dive into the possible mechanisms of these attacks, how they can be combined for increased efficacy, and their implications for device security. This paper discusses only the possible ways [1] the adversaries could have exploited and may include other attack vectors such as supply chain attack and few others. The aim of this paper as we discuss the potential attack mechanisms is only to focus on mitigations and awareness of the reader to perform advanced security testing.