Semiconductor Chip Hardware Security is in high demand these days. Modern electronic devices are expected to have high level of protection against many known MCU Attacking aimed at the IC extraction of stored information. This is especially important for devices used in critical areas like automotive, medical, banking and industrial control applications.
This leads to a constant arms race between attackers and developers. Usually new MCU attacking are disclosed in a responsible way leaving time for chip manufacturers and system engineers to develop countermeasures. However, there is always a chance that mitigation technology is not developed in time, or worse, not practical to implement. Are the engineers in semiconductor community prepared for such an outcome?
There is a discussion on how well the semiconductor community is prepared for something unexpected in MCU attacking technology. From the previous history it was clear that not all discoveries are easy to predict or even mitigate when fully learned. This means that new approaches will be required to tackle the problem. As an example, this paper demonstrates how easily the microprobing mcu crack could be applied even on 16-bit secure microcontroller.
It also shows that the expectation of battery-backed SRAM to be highly secure against invasive ic chip attacks is not quite true. It was commonly believed that decapsulation of a powered up MCU is not possible, therefore, the fact that it could be successfully decapsulated was totally unexpected. The consequence could be in the review of the security requirements for battery-backed devices which hold secret information.