Mutual information analysis under the view of higher-order statistics

Abstract

Mutual Information Analysis (MIA) is a generic attack which aims at measuring dependencies between side-channel signals and intermediate data during cryptographic operations. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to estimate the mutual information based on higher-order cumulants. The simulation and experimental results show that the cumulant-based MIA can be a good method in both first- and second-order attacks. The implementation of the proposed method is practical and its extension to higher-order analysis does not require any additional development. Under higher-order statistics, we confirm the generality of MIA by recognizing the similitude between classical analysis and the cumulant-based MIA. © 2010 Springer-Verlag.