Cryptology ePrint Archive: Report 2017/624

Fast Leakage Assessment

Oscar Reparaz and Benedikt Gierlichs and Ingrid Verbauwhede

Abstract: We describe a fast technique for performing the computationally heavy part of leakage assessment, in any statistical moment (or other property) of the leakage samples distributions. The proposed technique outperforms by orders of magnitude the approach presented at CHES 2015 by Schneider and Moradi. We can carry out evaluations that before took 90 CPU-days in 4 CPU-hours (about a 500-fold speed-up). As a bonus, we can work with exact arithmetic, we can apply kernel-based density estimation methods, we can employ arbitrary pre-processing functions such as absolute value to power traces, and we can perform information-theoretic leakage assessment. Our trick is simple and elegant, and lends itself to an easy and compact implementation. We fit a prototype implementation in about 130 lines of C code.

Category / Keywords: leakage assessment, efficient computation, side-channel analysis, countermeasure

Original Publication (in the same form): IACR-CHES-2017

Date: received 26 Jun 2017, last revised 27 Jun 2017

Contact author: oscar reparaz at esat kuleuven be

Available format(s): PDF | BibTeX Citation

Version: 20170627:194408 (All versions of this report)

Short URL: ia.cr/2017/624