The widely used encryption algorithms, based both on private- and public-key cryptography, provide provable security guarantees against attacks under an abstract model of computation. In reality, physical systems leak information and the adversarial access is not completely captured by the abstractions in the standard model. Attacks that exploit a physically observable signal, such as power, timing, or electromagnetic (EM) radiation, are known as side-channel attacks. They present a formidable challenge to ensuring the security of existing cryptographic applications. Embedded systems are especially vulnerable to side-channel attacks as they can easily become physically accessible to an attacker and thus permit extensive probing. This project focuses on a side-channel attack based on the electromagnetic radiation analysis.
The project aims to provide the designers of embedded cryptosystems with the ability to analyze the resilience of their designs at design-time. The project develops predictive models and algorithms that enable the computation of EM emanation profiles of information-bearing blocks and thus enables design-time investigation of embedded cryptosystem vulnerability to EM side-channel with sufficient accuracy at acceptable computational costs. The project relies on the recent advances in integral-equation based techniques for EM simulation to enable the needed level of simulation accuracy.
