From time immemorial, human beings have been forced to protect the fruits of their creativity and ensure the security of their property. This information is very often strategic, in particular in political and commercial relationships. Also the need to protect this information by keeping it concealed in regards to enemies or competitors soon appeared. From ancient times, the methods used for masking and eventually encrypting information were numerous. Protection techniques have only advanced grown since the industrial era and have led to the precursor of electro-mechanic machines (such as the famous Enigma machine). Nowadays, new protection circuitry embeds very efficient algorithms. Despite these protections, they remain a prime target for « attackers » who try to break through all means of securing structures, for fraudulent uses. These « attackers » have a multitude of attack techniques. One of them uses a method of fault injections using a laser beam. From the beginning (Chapter I), this manuscript describes the state of the art of fault injections, focusing on those made using a laser beam. It explains these intrusive methods and provides information on how to protect even the most secure microcontrollers against these types of attacks. It is necessary to understand the physical phenomena involved in the interaction between a coherent light wave, such as lasers, and the physicochemical material that makes up a microcontroller. To better understanding these phenomena, an electrical modeling of CMOS gates under laser illumination was implemented to predict their behavior (Chapter II). Good correlations have been obtained between measurements and electrical simulation. These results can be used to test the laser sensitivity of CMOS gates through electrical cartographies. Due to the better understanding of the phenomena and the developed simulator, many countermeasures have been developed. The techniques presented in this manuscript offer new possibilities to increase the robustness of CMOS circuits against laser attacks. This work has already enabled the implementation of efficient counter-measures on embedded laser sensors and significantly enhanced product security against different laser attacks.
