Fault Injection in On-Chip Interconnects: A Comparative Study of Wishbone, AXI-Lite, and AXI

Abstract: Fault injection attacks exploit physical disturbances to compromise the functionality and security of integrated circuits. As System on Chip (SoC) architectures grow in complexity, the vulnerability of on chip communication fabrics has become increasingly prominent. Buses, serving as interconnects among various IP cores, represent potential vectors for fault-based exploitation. In this study, we perform simulation-driven fault injection across three mainstream bus protocols Wishbone, AXI Lite, and AXI. We systematically examine fault success rates, spatial vulnerability distributions, and timing dependencies to characterize how faults interact with bus-level transactions. The results uncover consistent behavioral patterns across protocols, offering practical insights for both attack modeling and the development of resilient SoC designs.