Seminar, 6th February 2001


Speaker:
Sergei Skorobogatov, University of Cambridge

Date:
Tuesday 6th February 2001 at 16:15

Place:
Room TP4, Computer Laboratory

Title:
LOW TEMPERATURE DATA REMANENCE IN STATIC RAM


Security processors typically store secret key material in static RAM, from which power is removed if the device is tampered with. It is commonly believed that, at temperatures below -20C, the contents of SRAM can be `frozen'; therefore, many devices treat temperatures below this threshold as tampering events. We have done some experiments to establish the temperature dependency of data retention time in modern SRAM devices. Our experiments show that the conventional wisdom no longer holds.


Seminar, 6th February 2001 / Ross.Anderson@cl.cam.ac.uk
Last updated: 30th January 2001