Paper 2021/015

SoK: Remote Power Analysis

Macarena C. Martínez-Rodríguez, Ignacio M. Delgado-Lozano, and Billy Bob Brumley

Abstract

In recent years, numerous attacks have appeared that aim to steal secret information from their victim using the power side-channel vector, yet without direct physical access. These attacks are called Remote Power Attacks or Remote Power Analysis, utilizing resources that are natively present inside the victim environment. However, there is no unified definition about the limitations that a power attack requires to be defined as remote. This paper aims to propose a unified definition and concrete threat models to clearly differentiate remote power attacks from non-remote ones. Additionally, we collect the main remote power attacks performed so far from the literature, and the principal proposed countermeasures to avoid them. The search of such countermeasures denoted a clear gap in preventing remote power attacks at the technical level. Thus, the academic community must face an important challenge to avoid this emerging threat, given the clear room for improvement that should be addressed in terms of defense and security of devices that work with private information.

Metadata
Available format(s)
PDF
Category
Implementation
Publication info
Published elsewhere. ARES 2021
DOI
10.1145/3465481.3465773
Keywords
hardware securityapplied cryptographyside channel analysispower analysisremote power analysiscountermeasures
Contact author(s)
macarena @ imse-cnm csic es
ignacio delgadolozano @ tuni fi
billy brumley @ tuni fi
History
2021-06-13: revised
2021-01-06: received
See all versions
Short URL
https://ia.cr/2021/015
License
Creative Commons Attribution
CC BY

BibTeX

@misc{cryptoeprint:2021/015,
      author = {Macarena C.  Martínez-Rodríguez and Ignacio M.  Delgado-Lozano and Billy Bob Brumley},
      title = {SoK: Remote Power Analysis},
      howpublished = {Cryptology ePrint Archive, Paper 2021/015},
      year = {2021},
      doi = {10.1145/3465481.3465773},
      note = {\url{https://eprint.iacr.org/2021/015}},
      url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2021/015}
}
Note: In order to protect the privacy of readers, eprint.iacr.org does not use cookies or embedded third party content.