Keyless Entry: Breaking and Entering eMMC RPMB with EMFI

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that electromagnetic fault injection can break the authentication of eMMC RPMB, allowing attackers to overwrite secure data without detection, revealing vulnerabilities in the hardware security mechanism.

Contribution

It presents a novel fault injection attack on eMMC RPMB authentication, showing how electromagnetic pulses can compromise data integrity in real devices.

Findings

Successful glitched authentication in three eMMC models

Ability to overwrite secure data without detection

Vulnerabilities in hardware-based security mechanisms

Abstract

The Replay Protected Memory Block (RPMB) in modern storage systems provides a secure area where data integrity is ensured by authentication. This block is used in digital devices to store pivotal information that must be safeguarded against modification by potential attackers. This paper targets the authentication scheme of the RPMB in three different eMMCs from a major manufacturer. A glitch was injected by sending an electromagnetic pulse to the target chip. RPMB authentication was successfully glitched and the information stored in two target eMMCs was overwritten with arbitrary data, without affecting the integrity of other data.