The microcontrollers are widely used in nowadays electronic and modern devices. You can track them whether on personal use for fun or even for the serious and confidential applications by banks, security services, government authority or military field. Most of the algorithm that uploaded into its memory is well written in Assembler.

Many villains out there want to hack or attack the microcontroller, maybe just for fun or for their own purposes (some of them willing to hack and sell the top secret from companies for profitable) In order to reduce the risk of being attack by these microcontroller hackers, that is why we must know the types of attack categories.

Those four major attack categories that involve microcontrollers are:

Microprobing

This method is invasive attack, which once been used it can directly access to the chip surface. Then, we can observe, reprogram and interfere with the integrated circuit.

Eavesdropping

It cans easily eavesdrop the monitor with high time resolution and other electromagnetic radiation by the processor during normal operation.

Fault Generation

It will use the abnormal environment situation to produce malfunctions in the processor and to dominate the integrated circuit.

Software Attack

Use normal communication interface of the processor to penetrate and exploit the security in the protocols or manipulate the algorithm.

The latter three methods are the non-invasive attacks and the most dangerous and vulnerable compare with invasive attack. First of all, even the secret keys of the comprised card had been stolen, but the owner still didn’t notice about it and this could be exposure their system to a great danger. Secondly, it is easy to get the equipment for crack the system, as the cost and tools that needed for non-invasive is mostly cheap.

Invasive Attack on Microcontrollers

Most of us think that this invasive attack is much more complicated than non-invasive attack. Do you believe that we just a few simple tools, we can easily broke the PIC12C508A device? (You not need any special or high tech device, like the Doctor Who’s Sonic Screwdriver to broke the PIC12C508A device)

Well, let us get started…

• First thing first, you need to use the fuming nitric acid to remove plastic above the chip die (The fuming nitric acid will not harm the chip and bonding wires).

• After it, remove the acid with acetone and clean the sample in an ultrasonic bath.

• Then, do wash the chip to remove the salt and dry it up.

• After the chip had dry, you need to further to next stage, which expose the protection fuses to the UV light. Remember to find the chip first and protect them from damage.

• You can use opaque paper from protect the program memory from UV light

• You can read the program memory with any programmer units, after exposing the chip under UV light five to ten minutes.

Non-Invasive Attack on Microcontrollers

This method considered as a lot easier than the invasive attack, which we can penetrate and dominate the chip with a simple and cheap software. Ok, let’s take this PIC16F84 as sample.

The above PIC16F84 is operate IBM PC under MS-DOS or Windows 95/98 and it was written in C++. With just a simple hardware controller, we can continuously change the power supply and programming voltages.

As a conclusion, we must remembered one thing; every microcontroller has its own way to be hack and attack, that’s why we must always schedule a daily or weekly system checkup for the system. This will not only reduce the chance of being hack, but will ensure that the system performance standing on a top notch. [Source]

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