Nanofocused X-ray beam to reprogram secure circuits

Abstract

Synchrotron-based X-ray nanobeams are investigated as a tool to perturb microcontroller circuits. An intense hard X-ray focused beam of a few tens of nanometers is used to target the flash, EEPROM and RAM memory of a circuit. The obtained results show that it is possible to corrupt a single transistor in a semi-permanent state. A simple heat treatment can remove the induced effect, thus making the corruption reversible. An attack on a code stored in flash demonstrates unambiguously that this new technique can be a threat to the security of integrated circuits.