The Implementation Attacks Laboratory (IMPA Lab)

The Implementation Attacks Laboratory (IMPA Lab) was founded at IAIK in 1999. At the beginning, it was named "Side-Channel Analysis Laboratory (SCA Lab)" since its focus was this type of implementation attacks. At the end of 2006, the lab also started to be active in the directions of fault analysis and probing attacks. As a result, the lab was renamed to IMPA Lab in 2008 in order to reflect more precisely the field of its actvities. Within IAIK, the IMPA Lab is positioned in the general research area VLSI and is closely related to the second sub-area of VLSI called secure RFID. This shows that the IMPA Lab deals with cryptographic devices and systems in the context of implementation attacks all the way starting from the pure cryptographic algorithms and protocols over digital design and implementation down to the semiconductor level.

The types of implementation attacks we are specifically focusing on are:

• Side-channel analysis (SCA)
  • Simple (SPA) and differential power analysis (DPA) including template attacks
  • Simple (SEMA) and differential electro-magnetic analysis (DEMA)
• Fault analysis (FA)
  • non-invasive, e.g. power supply or clock glitches
  • semi-invasive, e.g. with light or electro-magnetic (EM) radiation
  • invasive, e.g. with focused ion-beams (FIBs)
• Probing attacks

Our general research topics are:

• Analyze the strength and practicability of existing and new implementation attacks on both unprotected and already protected cryptographic devices
• Find new types of implementation attacks and improve existing ones
• Develop practical, general, and efficient countermeasures against the different types of implementation attacks, which are applicable on the different design levels of a cryptographic device: architecture level (software/hardware), cell level (hardware)
• Algorithms, models, and tools to analyze the susceptability of cryptographic devices as early as possible in the design process (calculation, simulation, etc.)
• Methodologies and tools (design flows) to automatically implement cryptographic devices in an IMPA-resistant manner
• Together with the research area "secure RFID", we are in particular looking at implementation attacks (mainly EMA) on RFID tags and readers as well as at related countermeasures in the constraint RFID environment

Members

• Advisors
  • Karl C. Posch
  • Reinhard Posch
  • Vincent Rijmen
• Researchers
  • Michael Hutter
  • Mario Kirschbaum
  • Marcel Medwed
  • Thomas Plos
  • Jörn-Marc Schmidt
  • Alexander Szekely
  • Erich Wenger

Consulting

In all fields where the IMPA Lab is researching implementation attacks, members of the lab can provide consulting services. Possible topics are (not limited):

• Introduction to a specific type of implementation attacks
• Analysis of a particular cryptographic device or system in the context of implementation attacks
• How to implement an IMPA-resistant cryptographic device
• Guidance concerning laboratory infrastructure (oscilloscopes, frequency analyzers, measurement setups, chip tester, EM-probes, measurement and analysis software, microscopes, etc.)
• Recent developments in the field of implementation attacks

If you are interested, do not hesitate to contact a member of the IMPA Lab as listed above.