Fuse based replay protection with conservative fuse usage
Abstract:
A TPM is implemented in an SOC for thwarting PIN state replay attacks. Programmable fuses are used as a counter and an on-die RAM stores a blown-fuse count and a TPM state that includes a PIN-failure count and a fuse count. TPM initialization includes incrementing the TPM state PIN-failure count if the blown-fuse count is greater than the TPM state fuse count. Once a PIN is received, if the TPM state PIN-failure count satisfies a PIN failure policy and the PIN is correct, the TPM state PIN-failure count is cleared, and if the PIN is incorrect, a fuse is blown and the blown-fuse count is incremented. If the fuse blow fails, TPM activity is halted. If the fuse blow succeeds, the TPM state PIN-failure count is incremented and the TPM state fuse count is set equal to the blown-fuse count. The TPM state is saved to off-die non-volatile memory.
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