What is tamper resistance? Tamper resistance refers to the performance against tampering that takes measures such as destroying internal circuits when the unauthorized analysis is performed.
Today, it refers to a protection function against the unauthorized acquisition of important information in an IC card.
What is IC card tamper resistance?
If you lose your IC card
With the recent development of information technology, the use of IC cards to enter offices has increased.
An IC card is usually given to an individual staff member, and the computer can keep track of what that person has done, which helps improve security.
On the other hand, losing this IC card is a big deal. Anything that can be done with that IC card can also be done by the person who picks up the IC card.
Unauthorized use after loss is also a big security problem, but if someone analyzes the IC card and tries to abuse it further, the damage will increase further. “Tamper resistance”
prevents this unauthorized analysis.
IC card protection function
So what is the tamper resistance of IC cards?
As in the example above, if the IC card is lost or stolen, the information in the IC card can be analyzed and misused.
For example, Mr. A’s IC card only allows him to enter his own office and reference room in the building, but he analyzes the room permission system and changes the information on his IC card so that he can enter other rooms. It is conceivable to use. “Tamper resistance” is to destroy the internal circuit and prevent the contents from being read when
analysis for such unauthorized use is performed. For example, when a device that reads data signals is connected to an IC card, the IC card responds and erases the stored data.
Prioritize erasing and destroying information at the end of the cat-and-mouse game
Erasing information may sound like a big exaggeration.
The reason why IC cards have come to take such measures is that the information protection of IC cards has become a cat-and-mouse game.
It is expected that many attacks will be applied to IC cards, and there is no end to the need to think of ways to defend against them.
Also, even if you devised a defense method, hackers will come up with new attacks one after another.
For that reason, we introduced a mechanism (tamper resistance) that deletes information if even the slightest abnormality is detected, so that hackers cannot attack easily, and even if they are attacked, the information will be erased to limit the damage. It was decided to incorporate it.
The original meaning of tamper resistance
What is Tamper?
The term “tamper resistance” has become more popular with the use of IC cards, but it is not a term used only for IC cards.
Therefore, tamper resistance is not a term used only for IC cards, but refers to measures against tampering.
Leaving evidence of tampering (tamper-evident) is the first step to tamper resistance
So far, I have explained about tamper resistance.
If you had a hard time imagining the topic of IC cards earlier, you can think of Trump’s security seal.
In tournaments such as poker, the game starts with a security seal affixed to the cards to show that there is no fraud. The security seal is applied at the time of production in the factory, and the fact that it is not broken proves that no one has touched the playing cards, which means that no one has cheated.
Evidence of such fraud and tampering is called Tamper-Evident (tampering evidence). It can be said that it is.
