Launched in Fall 2019 on Crowd Supply, CW610 PhyWhisperer® USB is an affordable hardware-based USB 2.0 monitor and trigger platform that is controlled from Python. This PhyWhisperer USB module is designed to work with ChipWhisperer® and ChipSHOUTER® tools by serving as a unit to trigger on USB protocols with high accuracy. The CW610 includes a built-in shunt that allows monitoring power consumption on an external oscilloscope or ChipWhisperer. This PhyWhisperer USB module has a convenient front-panel button that allows the power-cycling of the target device. The CW610 features 20-pin connector interfaces to ChipWhisperer for providing clock and trigger synchronization.
USB is the most common interface for computer peripherals, which includes many USB-connected security devices such as Bitcoin Wallets, FIDO2 keys, and encrypted drives. Three of the biggest threats to these security devices are USB protocol errors (often found with fuzzing), side-channel power analysis, and fault injection. PhyWhisperer-USB targets the last two - it serves as a cycle-accurate triggering and precision monitoring tool. It watches the USB bus for specific data patterns, triggers an event (such as a fault injection or recording a power trace), and records USB data.
These capabilities are only offered by a handful of expensive commercial tools, and if you want to extend them with your own logic, you’re out of luck. With PhyWhisperer-USB being open-source, you can freely add your own logic to the FPGA.
PhyWhisperer-USB
- Hardware-level Sniffing
- Portable and Extendable
- Open-source
- USB Fuzzing and Hacking
- USB Sniffing
- Fault Injection and Side-channel Power Analysis
