Channel Equalization for Side Channel Attacks

Colin O'Flynn; Zhizhang (David) Chen

Paper 2014/028

Channel Equalization for Side Channel Attacks

Colin O'Flynn and Zhizhang (David) Chen

Abstract

This paper introduces the use of channel equalization as a method of simplifying side channel analysis attacks, by effectively collapsing all points in a power measurement trace into a single random variable. This uses a simple Finite Impulse Response (FIR) linear equalizer, which has been studied extensively in communications systems. In addition the estimation of a channel model is used in developing the Channel Estimation Analysis (CEA), which is a generic attack requiring similar assumptions to the Correlation Power Analysis (CPA) attack. Both channel equalization and the CEA attack are straight-forward to apply to real systems, and Python examples are provided. Results of attacking unprotected AES-128 and protected AES-256RSM on a microcontroller are provided.

Note: Fixes uploaded revision from July/2014 - some fixes still to be incorporated (compared to 20141124:025849 revision, this one only fixes some tiny typos).

Metadata

Available format(s): PDF
Category: Implementation
Publication info: Preprint. MINOR revision.
Keywords: side-channel analysis multivariate higher order DPA equalization
Contact author(s): coflynn @ newae com
History: 2014-11-24: last of 3 revisions; 2014-01-12: received; See all versions
Short URL: https://ia.cr/2014/028
License: CC BY

BibTeX

@misc{cryptoeprint:2014/028,
      author = {Colin O'Flynn and Zhizhang (David) Chen},
      title = {Channel Equalization for Side Channel Attacks},
      howpublished = {Cryptology {ePrint} Archive, Paper 2014/028},
      year = {2014},
      url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2014/028}
}