Abstract
This paper introduces new deep freezing attacks on capacitors and electronic circuits that use them. The new attacks leverage liquid nitrogen to rapidly freeze electrolytic capacitors and supercapacitors to temperatures approaching \(-195\,^\circ \)C (\(-320\,^\circ \)F or 77 K). Due to the quick freezing to the extremely low temperatures, overall capacitance of the capacitors rapidly drops towards zero. Change of the capacitance can affect reliability and security of electronic circuits that these capacitors are used to build, and this work in particular evaluates electronic filters, as well as capacitor-powered microcontrollers, and their response to the deep freezing attacks. This work presents disruptive attacks that affect the operation of the target device, but then return device to normal operation after short amount of time when the components warm up. In addition to the disruptive attacks, this work also demonstrates destructive attacks where the target device is damaged due to the extreme freezing. Both types of attacks leave no trace as the liquid nitrogen evaporates after the attack is finished. This paper highlights new threats that designers should be aware of and defend against.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
ADALM2000: Advanced Active Learning Module, https://www.analog.com/en/design-center/evaluation-hardware-and-software/evaluation-boards-kits/ADALM2000.html.
References
Faltus, R., Flegr, Z., Šponar, R., Jáně, M., Zedníček, T.: DC/DC converter output capacitor benchmark. In: Annual Passive Components Symposium. CARTS Europe (2008)
Halderman, J.A., et al.: Lest we remember: cold-boot attacks on encryption keys. Commun. ACM 52(5), 91–98 (2009)
Nnorom, Jr., O., Morris, J., Giechaskiel, I., Szefer, J.: Chill out: freezing attacks on capacitors and dc/dc converters. In: Proceedings of the European Test Symposium. ETS (2021)
Müller, T., Spreitzenbarth, M.: FROST: forensic recovery of scrambled telephones. In: International Conference on Applied Cryptography and Network Security. ACNS (2013)
Ransford, B., Sorber, J., Fu, K.: Mementos: system support for long-running computation on RFID-scale devices. In: International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems. ASPLOS (2011)
Yitbarek, S.F., Aga, M.T., Das, R., Austin, T.: Cold boot attacks are still hot: security analysis of memory scramblers in modern processors. In: International Symposium on High Performance Computer Architecture. HPCA (2017)
Acknowledgment
This work was supported in part by NSF grant 1901901. The authors would like to thank Kelly Woods and the Yale University Cleanroom for assistance in obtaining liquid nitrogen used in the experiments.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Morris, J., Nnorom, O., Abedin, A., Erata, F., Szefer, J. (2022). Deep Freezing Attacks on Capacitors and Electronic Circuits. In: Batina, L., Picek, S., Mondal, M. (eds) Security, Privacy, and Applied Cryptography Engineering. SPACE 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 13162. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-95085-9_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-95085-9_10
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-95084-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-95085-9
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)