Methodology of power analysis attack

• Main Author: Toh, Zhen Hui
• Other Authors: Gwee Bah Hwee
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2016
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/67936
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Power Analysis Attacks (PAA) are side-channel attacks (SCA) launched by cyber attackers to obtain information from cryptography devices. These information are normally highly confidential and therefore studies in protecting cryptography against PAA has become immensely important. There are two types of attacks in Power Analysis Attacks, namely the simple power analysis attacks and the differential power analysis attack. In this paper, we will be mainly targeting on differential power analysis attack. The Differential Power Analysis Attack also known as DPA Attack targets on the correlation between the power dissipation of the cryptography device and the secret key. Hence given enough amount of time and information on the power dissipation spectrum of the cryptography device, the attacker can easily deduce what is the secret key. In this report, we will be discussing on three main topics such as Cryptography, Power Analysis Attack and lastly its Countermeasures. The focus will be put on the Hiding techniques of the countermeasure particularly the Dual Rail Precharge Logic Style. The main contribution of this report is to attack different types of logic style such as Precharge Static Logic, Sense Amplifier Based Logic, and Wave Dynamic Differential Logic implemented in part of AES cryptography algorithm (XOR and SBOX operation). The attacks were done basically to observe the cryptography power dissipation of all three cases and analyze the effectiveness of each individual logic implementation resilience against the attacks.