Frequency injection and glitch attack on ring oscillator based true random number generators

Abstract

Random Number Generators (RNGs) are used in various fields such as IoT, Artificial Intelligence, Database, and Information Security in ICT systems. Since RNG is essential in the security industry that applied cryptographic technology, it is especially important to develop high performance RNGs. However, since most of the RNGs are implemented in a physical chip, they can be vulnerable to side-channel attacks. In this thesis, we make Ring Oscillator (RO) based True Random Number Generators (TRNGs) and perform frequency injection and glitch attack on them. We analyze the abnormal random numbers obtained after the attack and show that the RO based TRNG may not be safe for side-channel attacks. In addition, we present appropriate countermeasures for RO based TRNG to defend against our attacks.