Unraveling Side-Channel Analysis: Efficient evaluation of embedded devices against (portable) profiling attacks
Publication year
2022Author(s)
Publisher
S.l. : s.n.
ISBN
9789464195859
Number of pages
xvii, 235 p.
Annotation
Radboud University, 08 november 2022
Promotor : Batina, L. Co-promotor : Armendariz, I.
Publication type
Dissertation
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Organization
Digital Security
Subject
Digital SecurityAbstract
Embedded systems are specialized platforms consisting of hardware and software used in a wide range of domains. In recent years, we have witnessed a substantial increase due to the growing demand for new applications. As they are constrained environments by nature, secure implementation is challenging, making security measures sometimes inadequately enforced or even absent. Furthermore, developers sometimes forget that those are physical devices susceptible to failure, and their physical properties typically leak information. For example, suppose an embedded device uses a cryptographically secure cypher, say AES. If the device is not sufficiently protected against implementation attacks, it is often possible to infer the cryptographic key by simply observing its power consumption. This type of attack, which passively exploits side-channel signals from the device (e.g., power consumption, electromagnetic emission, or timing), is known as a side-channel analysis (SCA) attack.
The main problem of integrating and validating countermeasures against SCA attacks is in being a complex and human-dependent process. Current certification schemes like Common Criteria require attacking the device with a battery on known SCA techniques and rating the effort needed to succeed. This approach is often prohibitive in terms of time and resources. In addition, the success or failure of these techniques is strongly dependent on a vast amount of variables and the expertise of the evaluator performing them, making the effort estimates rather subjective.
Thus, this thesis focuses on optimizing some aspects of existing schemes and mitigating the problems that make them challenging to implement. Our main research objective is to mitigate the complexity and enormous human dependence of various aspects of SCA testing. To this end, several tools are presented that allow for a less biased perspective. We also emphasize the need to perform SCA testing more systematically and with less dependence on the human in the loop.
This item appears in the following Collection(s)
- Academic publications [245186]
- Dissertations [13779]
- Electronic publications [132505]
- Faculty of Science [37457]
- Open Access publications [106097]
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