Paper 2026/2660
Towards Quantum Sensing for Side-Channel Analysis
, Fraunhofer Institute for Applied and Integrated Security, Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Solid State Physics IAF, Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Solid State Physics IAF, Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Solid State Physics IAF, Fraunhofer Institute for Applied and Integrated Security, Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Solid State Physics IAF, Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Solid State Physics IAF, Fraunhofer Institute for Applied and Integrated Security, RheinMain University of Applied SciencesAbstract
Side-Channel Analysis is an established field of research to assess implementation vulnerabilities of cryptographic algorithms. One typically exploited side-channel is the electromagnetic (EM) near-field, which is proportional to the data-dependent currents flowing through an Integrated Circuit (IC). The field of Quantum Sensing (QS) based on Nitrogen-Vacancy (NV) centers has shown promising approaches for different measurement configurations like scanning or spatially resolved wide-field imaging. Already today, QS has been used in the analysis of (quasi-)static magnetic fields on ICs in spatially-resolved wide-field magnetometers. In this work, we study the applicability of QS for the analysis of dynamic EM fields of ICs. For the first time, we demonstrate spectral-temporal analysis of the EM-side-channel using an NV-center-based Radio-Frequency spectrometer. Our sensor has a real-time bandwidth of 1.1 GHz with adjustable center frequency and directly probes the frequency spectrum via NV center interactions in the time domain. The approach circumvents any computations like Fourier transforms or performing frequency sweeps, enabling GHz-realtime bandwidths. We use this spectrometer to analyze the EM emanations of an RSA decryption and perform leakage detection of a software implementation of the Number Theoretic Transform - a building block of all current lattice based post-quantum algorithms - running on a Cortex M4 commercial off-the-shelf microcontroller.
Metadata
- Available format(s)
-
PDF
- Category
- Applications
- Publication info
- Preprint.
- Keywords
- side-channel-analysisscaqsquantum-sensingquantumradio-frequency spectrometer
- Contact author(s)
-
oliver butowski @ aisec fraunhofer de
paul haas @ iaf fraunhofer de
jonas hasenkrug @ iaf fraunhofer de
emanuele strieder @ aisec fraunhofer de
michael kunzer @ iaf fraunhofer de
jan jeske @ iaf fraunhofer de
nisha jacob @ aisec fraunhofer de
Marc Stoettinger @ hs-rm de - History
- 2026-10-28: approved
- 2026-10-27: received
- See all versions
- Short URL
- https://ia.cr/2026/2660
- License
-
CC BY-NC-ND
BibTeX
@misc{cryptoeprint:2026/2660,
author = {Oliver Butowski and Paul Haas and Jonas Hasenkrug and Niklas Mathes and Emanuele Strieder and Michael Kunzer and Jan Jeske and Nisha Jacob Kabakci and Marc Stöttinger},
title = {Towards Quantum Sensing for Side-Channel Analysis},
howpublished = {Cryptology {ePrint} Archive, Paper 2026/2660},
year = {2026},
url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2026/2660}
}
