What is Glitching?

Understanding Glitching

Glitching, sometimes called fault injection, is a technique that involves intentionally manipulating factors like power supply, clock signals, or environmental conditions to push a device into an unexpected operating state. By introducing these short, carefully timed disruptions—referred to as “glitches”—attackers can break through built-in security safeguards, leading to actions such as extracting encryption keys, inserting malicious code, or elevating privileges.

This approach is especially common in hardware-based attacks on devices with limited resources, such as smart cards, IoT devices, or other embedded systems. Because these systems often rely on tight constraints for performance and security, strategic fluctuations in voltage or timing may overcome protective mechanisms that were assumed to be reliable.