A Tutorial on Physical Security and Side-Channel Attacks

Abstract. A recent branch of cryptography focuses on the physical constraints that a real-life cryptographic device must face, and attempts to exploit these constraints (running time, power consumption, . . . ) to expose the device’s secrets. This gave birth to implementation-specific attacks, which often turned out to be much more efficient than the best known cryptanalytic attacks against the underlying primitive as an idealized object. This paper aims at providing a tutorial on the subject, overviewing the main kinds of attacks and highlighting their underlying principles.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2004
• Where: FOSAD
• Authors: François Koeune, François-Xavier Standaert
• Keywords: Cryptanalytic Attacks, FOSAD 2004, Physical Constraints, Real-life Cryptographic Device