Comparative Architectural and Security Analysis of Microarchitectures under EMFI

Abstract

This thesis presents a comparative analysis of two widely used microcontrollers: STM-32 and NXP Cortex M-0. The comparative focus lays on their microarchitectural differences and security behavior under electromagnetic fault injection (EMFI). Understanding the fault resilience of these broadly used microcontrollers is essential, given the growing relevance of embedded systems in critical applications such as Smart-Cards or automotive- and industrial control systems.

 

Two central research questions guide this work:

  • How do architectural differences influence instruction-level vulnerability to EMFI?
  • What differences can be observed in pipeline behavior, particularly in branching and instruction fetch stages?