Paper 2020/937

BAM BAM!! On Reliability of EMFI for in-situ Automotive ECU Attacks

Colin O'Flynn

Abstract

Electromagnetic Fault Injection (EMFI) is a well-known technique for performing fault injection attacks. While such attacks may be easy demonstrated in a laboratory condition, the applicability of them to real-life environments is required to understand how concerned about EMFI designers of systems should be. This work targets a recent (2019) automotive ECU, and analyzes the target microcontroller used in laboratory conditions, and then transitions the attack to a real-world “in-situ” attack. The specific work appears relevant to several devices in the MPC55xx and MPC56xx series, which are automotive-focused PowerPC devices.