Offensive Security Internship - Physical Attacks

Apple System-on-Chips (SoCs) implement multiple security mechanisms to ensure platform integrity against a broad spectrum of threats, including hardware fault attacks. These attacks are sophisticated techniques where adversaries intentionally introduce physical disturbances to disrupt normal processor operation, causing exploitable errors that can reveal sensitive data or bypass critical security mechanisms. While Apple SoCs demonstrate strong resilience against these attack vectors, our hardware security teams maintain continuous research efforts to ensure sustained protection against evolving threats. Laser Fault Injection (LFI) currently represents the most effective technique for disrupting SoC operation, but it requires expensive equipment and specialized chip preparation that are only accessible to well-equipped laboratories. Additionally, this technique cannot be effectively applied to mixed logic-memory stacking architectures where the logic (CPU) package is positioned beneath the memory package. Electromagnetic Fault Injection (EMFI) does not suffer from these limitations and is increasingly recognized as a cost-effective alternative approach. The objective of this internship is to advance the state-of-the-art in EMFI attacks against advanced semiconductor technologies like those employed in Apple products. The ultimate goal is to use these research findings to further strengthen Apple's hardware security implementations and ensure the best protection against emerging fault injection techniques.