How esReverse is empowering the semiconductor industry

The semiconductor industry plays a critical role in powering everything from smartphones to advanced medical devices. As the reliance on these tiny but powerful chips grows, so does the need for robust security measures to protect them from logical and physical attacks. This is where esReverse comes into play, providing cutting-edge solutions to empower security testing and ensure the integrity of semiconductor products.

Understanding the semiconductor threat landscape

Before diving into how esReverse enhances security, it's essential to understand the types of attacks that semiconductors face. These attacks can be broadly classified into two categories: logical attacks and physical attacks.

Logical Attacks

Logical attacks on semiconductor devices focus on manipulating the software and digital logic to exploit vulnerabilities within the system. These attacks aim to disrupt the normal operation of the device, gain unauthorized access, or extract sensitive information by exploiting weaknesses in the software code, algorithms, or digital logic circuits.

Logical attacks are executed without physical interference, relying on techniques that target the system's computational processes and data handling to achieve their malicious objectives.

Physical Attacks

Physical attacks target the tangible aspects of semiconductor devices, exploiting their physical properties to compromise security. These attacks involve direct interaction with the hardware, such as probing, measuring, or altering the physical characteristics of the semiconductor components. By analyzing or manipulating power consumption, electromagnetic emissions, or structural integrity, attackers can bypass security mechanisms, retrieve confidential data, or disrupt device functionality.

Physical attacks are particularly challenging to defend against due to the sophisticated methods used and the direct access required to the hardware components.

The role of eShard in security testing

eShard has been a leading actor in security testing against physical attacks on semiconductor chips for decades, providing robust solutions for testing hardware against advanced threats. Now, eShard is consolidating this expertise in software testing with the introduction of esReverse. A powerful and collaborative platform that helps cybersecurity experts to validate protections at the binary level by targeting software-level defenses embedded in the chip.

esReverse offers a suite of advanced tools and techniques designed to address both logical and physical attacks effectively. By executing firmware code and simulating various attack scenarios, esReverse tests the robustness of these protections. Its advanced emulation capabilities allow precise control over the runtime environment, ensuring comprehensive security validation for semiconductor devices.

With esReverse, eShard continues to set the standard for security testing, ensuring resilience against all types of threats, such as:

1. Fault Injection Testing

Fault injection involves deliberately causing faults in a device, creating exploitable faulty behavior and skipping security verifications. For instance, a firmware fault injection can compromise a signature verification during a secure boot sequence.

esReverse provides advanced binary fault injection testing capabilities. By simulating various fault conditions, it helps identify weaknesses in the semiconductor design. This proactive approach allows manufacturers to address vulnerabilities before they can be exploited by malicious actors.

2. Binary Fuzzing Testing

Fuzzing is a common initial test method used by hackers due to its low cost. It involves bombarding the software with varied, unexpected inputs to uncover bugs. Implementing a successful fuzzing campaign requires specific tools and frameworks, and the identification of crashes or unexpected behavior is crucial. Consequences can be severe since any exposed vulnerability represents a logical path for compromising a digital system.

The binary fuzzing tools within esReverse are designed to stress-test semiconductor devices rigorously. By generating a wide array of random inputs, esReverse can uncover hidden vulnerabilities that might not be apparent through traditional testing methods. This helps in building more resilient and secure semiconductor products.

3. Side Channel Analysis

Side channel attacks exhibit secret keys by analyzing any physical signals from cryptographic operations. With a low cost material and a bit of expertise, secrets such as an AES key can be compromised in a few minutes.

esReverse also excels in side channel analysis. It enables the detection and mitigation of side channel vulnerabilities by analyzing power consumption, electromagnetic emissions, and other physical characteristics. This helps in ensuring that sensitive information remains protected against sophisticated physical attacks.

Why esReverse?

✔ Optimized Performance

Our emulation engine, based on QEMU, is specifically optimized to enhance performance by minimizing unnecessary recordings and actions. This optimization ensures efficient use of time and resources during testing.

✔ Full System Emulation

The platform provides a flexible emulation environment that users can adapt to their specific hardware requirements. This flexibility enables users to build a comprehensive emulation environment for achieving full system emulation.

✔ Customizable Attack Models

The esReverse platform offers high levels of customization for attack simulations. Users can define leakage or fault models and set specific success criteria. For example, users can target a specific register or memory value at any point during execution.

✔ Broad Architecture Support

Our solution supports a wide range of architectures, including Intel x86, x64, Arm 32, Arm 64, and recently RISC-V. With seamless support for generic code, users can extend the emulation environment to accommodate non-public IP flexibly. Additionally, advanced features like taint analysis and timeless analysis enable comprehensive dynamic binary testing across different architectures, ensuring robust security validation without time constraints.

Enhance your firmware security testing

Bridging Security Experts and Embedded Software Developers

esReverse aims to be a pivotal resource in the semiconductor industry by easing the collaboration between security experts and embedded software developers. Our platform allows security experts to define test campaigns, attack assumptions, and minimum security requirements. Developers can then test their code against these predefined campaigns within the same platform, streamlining the security validation process.

Shift-Left Security Validation Testing

esReverse supports integration into CI/CD pipelines, enabling early and continuous security validation. After security experts define the test campaigns, scripts can be created and integrated into the pipeline. This ensures that software protections are treated as fundamental software features, seamlessly incorporating secure testing into the development lifecycle.

Advanced Functional Debugging

Combining various software components often leads to bugs, especially when integrating third-party or cross-division source code. Advanced debugging tools are essential for efficiently identifying and understanding these issues. The esReverse platform includes exceptional analysis capabilities for black box testing, helping software engineers save time and accurately pinpoint failures.

Post-Evaluation Investigation

Chipset vendors frequently require third-party security evaluations on real devices, often in white-box scenarios where the source code is available. These evaluations can uncover critical vulnerabilities tied to specific physical behaviors. Dynamic binary analyses, like those provided by esReverse, are crucial for managing and understanding these vulnerabilities effectively, especially those revealed through external evaluations.

The power of esReverse in your hands

As the semiconductor industry continues to evolve, the importance of robust security measures cannot be overstated. esReverse empowers security testing by providing advanced tools and techniques to combat both logical and physical attacks.

By leveraging the comprehensive features of the esReverse platform, semiconductor industry professionals can enhance their security testing, debugging, and evaluation processes, ensuring robust protection and efficient software development. Whether you're looking to preemptively tackle potential security flaws or streamline your testing process, esReverse equips you with the tools necessary to enhance your security posture significantly.