An experimental CPA attack for arduino cryptographic module and analysis in software-based CPA countermeasures

Abstract

Side channel attacks are attacks that are based on "Side Channel Information". Side channel information is information that can be retrieved from the encryption device that is neither the plaintext to be encrypted nor the cipher text resulting from the encryption process. Side-channel attacks are easy-to-implement whilst powerful attacks against cryptographic implementations and their targets range from primitives, protocols, modules, and devices to even systems. These attacks pose a serious threat to the security of cryptographic modules. In consequence, cryptographic implementations have to be evaluated for their resistivity against such attacks and the incorporation of different countermeasures has to be considered. In this paper, we explain about the correlation power analysis attack, which is the most dangerous type of side channel attack. Also, we implemented and experiment this attack using ATmega cryptographic module for configuration and the oscilloscope to obtain the experimental result, and MATLAB program for the verification process and design technology to analyze countermeasures. © 2014 SERSC.