Side channel attacks and countermeasures – Analysis of secure implementations
Επιθέσεις πλευρικού καναλιού και αντίμετρα – Ανάλυση ασφαλών υλοποιήσεων
Master Thesis
Author
Κυρανούδης, Πασχάλης
Kyranoudis, Paschalis
Date
2021-07Advisor
Ψαράκης, ΜιχαήλPsarakis, Michael
View/ Open
Keywords
Side channel attacks ; AES ; Masking ; 1st order attack ; 2nd order attack ; Επιθέσεις πλευρικού καναλιούAbstract
Over the past 10 years, a continuously increasing interest has been shown in the field
of Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Having started almost two decades earlier, smart cards
could be found almost everywhere in our everyday lives (Payphone Cards, ATM/Credit Cards,
Computer Security, Satellite TV, etc).
Today, the embedded devices ecosystem has expanded dramatically to multiple areas
of our lives. Health, Transport, Energy, Military are just some of the fields that are now
heavily dependent on the reliability and security of these devices. Since they hold sensitive
data and, sometimes, crucial information, they have to be protected from unauthorized
access. Therefore, various security measures and cryptographic algorithms are applied to
enhance their security. However, they have found to be vulnerable to specific kind of attacks, the Side-Channel Attacks, which take advantage of the physical imperfections of the devices and the data power dependency. In this thesis, we will focus on the implementations that use the
Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), the countermeasures that can be integrated and their
weak spots. First, we will describe what makes the cryptographic devices prone to side-channel
attacks. As a proof of concept, we will mount a 1st Order Attack and explain the results.
Afterwards, we will focus on the Masking countermeasure to secure our device against these
types of attacks. Having our microcontroller set up and secured, as described above, we will attempt to
overcome this protection mechanism by exploiting it and executing a 2nd Order Attack, using
power traces. As the volume of the needed computations rises exponentially, even for today’s
standards, we will examine methods to make these attacks more effective and feasible.
Lastly, we will compare the results and draw conclusions about the complexity and
effectiveness of the attacks.