How An Attacker Can Kill Your Phone and PC by Making It Older and Some “MAGIC”

The performance of an IC degrades over a period of time and it ultimately results in the failure of the device. This is just like the human beings – we age, our body functions stop working and ultimately we die. However, some genetic disorders can make this aging process faster to make you weaker sooner than expected.
Along the similar lines, the researchers at NYU have recently published a paper (find the link below) that shows how to infect the electronic devices with the digital version of this aging disorder.

The computer scientists at NYU have unveiled methods that could be used to attack the device hardware by causing the integrated circuits to age rapidly. The paper titled “MAGIC: Malicious Aging in Circuits/Cores” describes the effects of the MAGIC attack on a smartphone, that could result in the failure of your device.

On one hand the IC designers are putting their tremendous efforts into reducing the aging of electronic chips, the attackers are working in the opposite direction to accelerate the wear. Discussing the Negative-Bias Temperature-Instability (NTBT), the researchers focus on presenting a framework to wear out the processors.