Paper 2008/162
Formally Bounding the Side-Channel Leakage in Unknown-Message Attacks
Michael Backes and Boris Köpf
Abstract
We propose a novel approach for quantifying a system's resistance to unknown-message side-channel attacks. The approach is based on a measure of the secret information that an attacker can extract from a system from a given number of side-channel measurements. We provide an algorithm to compute this measure, and we use it to analyze the resistance of hardware implementations of cryptographic algorithms with respect to power and timing attacks. In particular, we show that message-blinding -- the common countermeasure against timing attacks -- reduces the rate at which information about the secret is leaked, but that the complete information is still eventually revealed. Finally, we compare information measures corresponding to unknown-message, known-message, and chosen-message attackers and show that they form a strict hierarchy.
Metadata
- Available format(s)
-
PDF
- Publication info
- Published elsewhere. This is an extended version of the ESORICS '08 paper
- Keywords
- Side-Channel AttacksFormal Verification
- Contact author(s)
- bkoepf @ mpi-sws mpg de
- History
- 2008-08-13: revised
- 2008-04-14: received
- See all versions
- Short URL
- https://ia.cr/2008/162
- License
-
CC BY
BibTeX
@misc{cryptoeprint:2008/162,
author = {Michael Backes and Boris Köpf},
title = {Formally Bounding the Side-Channel Leakage in Unknown-Message Attacks},
howpublished = {Cryptology {ePrint} Archive, Paper 2008/162},
year = {2008},
url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2008/162}
}
