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eprint.iacr.orgpaper

Beyond the Scope of This Paper: Practical Flash-Accelerator and Cache-Collision Timing Attacks on Microcontrollers

Colin O'Flynn's paper shows that the flash accelerator in most microcontrollers produces the same timing collisions as a cache, so cacheless Cortex-M devices remain open to cache-collision attacks on AES. AES keys were recovered from as few as 750 traces across six cryptographic libraries, eight architectures and over twenty devices. It also attacks SPI bootloaders, Ethernet, CTAP2 over USB and 802.15.4, and releases the open-source tool FlashWhisperer.

TL;DR Shows flash-accelerator timing collisions leak AES keys from cacheless microcontrollers in about 750 traces, and releases FlashWhisperer.
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Technologies named here

  • Arm Cortex-M4
  • 802.15.4
  • Cortex-M microcontrollers (cacheless, with flash accelerator)
  • CTAP2 over USB
  • Ethernet
  • FlashWhisperer
  • SPI
  • SPI bootloaders

Standards and laws named here

  • AES
  • CTAP2
  • IEEE 802.15.4

Techniques named here

  • cache-collision timing attack
  • Flash-accelerator timing attack

Concepts named here

  • Colin O'Flynn
  • Flash accelerator timing collisions

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