Investigation of Side-Channel Attacks - ISCA

ISCA is a basic research project funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) (contract number P18321-N15). The primary goals of ISCA are the analysis of existing cryptographic devices in terms of their susceptibility to side-channel attacks as well as the development of new countermeasures against these attacks.

Communication systems are typically secured by cryptographic algorithms. Unfortunately, a communication system which is based on a secure algorithm can still be vulnerable to so-called implementation attacks. A powerful class of such attacks is called side-channel attacks, which exploit information that is unintentionally leaking from a device executing a cryptographic algorithm.

Power analysis attacks (which are side-channel attacks that exploit the information which is leaked by the power consumption of a device) have been widely researched in the cryptographic community. Especially attacks on implementations of symmetric encryption schemes have received much attention. Implementations of asymmetric schemes have to be scrutinized in more detail. Recent research in EM analysis indicates that the EM side-channels potentially contain information which is not present in the power side-channel.

The first goal of this project is to thoroughly investigate the side-channel information that is available in the electromagnetic emanations of cryptographic devices. Our second goal is to scrutinize implementations of asymmetric cryptographic primitives in terms of their resistance against side-channel attacks. Our third goal is to advance the research on side-channel attacks in general. In this context, we plan to continue the additional research activities that we have been started within the FWF-funded project P16110.