Investigations on Simple and Differential Power Analysis - ISDPA

The project ISDPA is concerned with basic research on SPA (simple power analysis) & DPA (differential power analysis) and is funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) (contract number P16110-N04). The primary goals of ISDPA are the analysis of existing cryptographic devices in terms of their susceptibility to power analysis attacks as well as the development of new countermeasures against these attacks.

Due to the widespread use of smart cards as security tokens, they are interesting targets for many attacks. Many applications, like electronic purse or e-government, need a very high security level. Smart cards can fulfill this requirement only if mounting any known attack is practical infeasible. Secrets on the card are protected by using cryptographic protocols and algorithms, which provide an adequate security level. Attacks based on a publication of Paul Kocher (1998), so called side-channel attacks, do not attack the mathematical algorithm, but the physical implementation which leaks side-channel information (power consumption, computation time, ...) when the algorithm is executed. Since a potential attacker has a smart card in her hands, the cards for security applications have to repel these kind of attack.
A lot of countermeasures against these attacks have been developed, but also the attacks themselves improved a lot since 1998. Actually implemented countermeasures need generally a high amount of chip-area and power consumption, or do not provide a sufficient security level for possible future attacks with better measurement equipment. Although a lot of research has been done, no ultimate solution for the problem has been found until now.
The development of effective countermeasures not only needs deep knowledge in design of crypto circuits, but also a full understanding of the attacks themselves. During the project we perform DPA and SPA attacks on various existing smart cards. Simultaneously, we carry on our development of new countermeasures on the algorithmic and on the circuit level. We also closely cooperate with the PA (Power Analysis) research team of COSIC at K.U. Leuven, Belgium.

If you are interested in further information on this project, please contact a member of the IMPA Lab.