Title: An experimental setup for practical differential electromagnetic and power analysis of AES cryptosystem

Authors: Massoud Masoumi; Mohammad Hadi Rezayati; Weidong Shi

Addresses: Department of Computer Science, University of Houston, 501 Philip G. Hoffman Hall, Houston, TX, 77204-3010, USA ' Sajad University of Technology, P.O. Box 4664-91375, No. 64, North Jalal-Ale-Ahmad Blvd., Mashad, Iran ' Department of Computer Science, University of Houston, 501 Philip G. Hoffman Hall, Houston, TX, 77204-3010, USA

Abstract: Differential electromagnetic analysis implies measuring electromagnetic radiations of a cipher-circuit in an attempt to uncover part of a cipher key. Cryptographic security gets compromised if the electromagnetic emissions correlate with those from a hypothetical model of the cipher circuit. This article describes experimental setup for performing electromagnetic analysis as well as the measurement probe that is the critical piece of equipment for performing electromagnetic attacks. Most of the probes that are used for electromagnetic attacks in the published papers are self-made and no detailed specification is available for them. The accuracy and efficiency of the designed setup was verified by practical results obtained from real implementation of both attacks on an AT89C51AC2 microcontroller. The results of this work can be served for protecting microprocessor-based security tokens such as smart cards that are vulnerable to these kinds of attacks.

Keywords: differential electromagnetic analysis; DEMA; differential power analysis; DPA; advanced encryption standard; AES cryptosystem; cryptography; microcontroller implementation; side-channel attacks; cipher keys; cryptographic security; electromagnetic emissions; probes; electromagnetic attacks; microprocessor based security tokens; smart cards.

DOI: 10.1504/IJITST.2015.073918

International Journal of Internet Technology and Secured Transactions, 2015 Vol.6 No.1, pp.9 - 24

Received: 22 Aug 2014
Accepted: 06 Jan 2015
Published online: 30 Dec 2015 *

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