Analysis of XY electromagnetic radiations for side-channel attacks

Details

Supervisors

Standaert, François-Xavier ; Verleysen, Michel

Faculty

Ecole polytechnique de Louvain

Degree label

Master [120] : ingénieur civil en informatique

Abstract

In this era of digital revolution, computer security is at the center of many issues. Passwords are used by most people in their cellphones, computers and bank accounts. Regarding their efficiency, the more passwords are securing important data, the more they should be hard to retrieve for adversaries. Cryptography, the ciphering of secret messages, began thousands of years ago with simple methods using pen and paper or little mechanical tools. With modern computers and electronic devices, cryptography is more than ever a field of great interest, using way more complicated schemes than before. Moreover, cryptanalysis, the art of breaking the ciphered codes, has always been growing as fast as cryptography. More recently, attacks that do not deal with the cipher but rather with its implementation were designed. These are called side-channel attacks. As opposed to cryptanalysis which uses brute force or theoretical weaknesses in order to decipher the codes, side-channel attacks observe physical effects induced by the system performing cryptography. There are various types of side-channel attacks like observing the power consumption, observing the time of computation and the one of interest in this work: observing the electromagnetic radiations.