Profiling Good Leakage Models For Masked Implementations

Leakage model plays a very important role in side channel attacks. An accurate leakage model greatly improves the efficiency of attacks. However, how to profile a good enough leakage model, or how to measure the accuracy of a leakage model, is seldom studied. Durvaux et al. proposed leakage certification tests to profile good enough leakage model for unmasked implementations. However, they left the leakage model profiling for protected implementations as an open problem. To solve this problem, we propose the first practical higher-order leakage model certification tests for masked implementations. First and second order attacks are performed on the simulations of serial and parallel implementations of a first-order fixed masking. A third-order attack is performed on another simulation of a second-order random masked implementation. The experimental results show that our new tests can profile the leakage models accurately

On the susceptibility of Texas Instruments SimpleLink platform microcontrollers to non-invasive physical attacks

We investigate the susceptibility of the Texas Instruments SimpleLink platform microcontrollers to non-invasive physical attacks. We extracted the ROM bootloader of these microcontrollers and then analysed it using static analysis augmented with information obtained through emulation. We demonstrate a voltage fault injection attack targeting the ROM bootloader that allows to enable debug access on a previously locked microcontroller within seconds. Information provided by Texas Instruments reveals that one of our voltage fault injection attacks abuses functionality that is left over from the integrated circuit manufacturing process. The demonstrated physical attack allows an adversary to extract the firmware (i.e. intellectual property) and to bypass secure boot. Additionally, we mount side-channel attacks and differential fault analysis attacks on the hardware AES co-processor. To demonstrate the practical applicability of these attacks we extract the firmware from a Tesla Model 3 key fob. This paper describes a case study covering Texas Instruments SimpleLink microcontrollers. Similar attack techniques can be, and have been, applied to microcontrollers from other manufacturers. The goal of our work is to document our analysis methodology and to ensure that system designers are aware of these vulnerabilities. They will then be able to take these into account during the product design phase. All identified vulnerabilities were responsibly disclosed

Side-Channel Attacks meet Secure Network Protocols

Side-channel attacks are powerful tools for breaking systems that implement cryptographic algorithms. The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) is widely used to secure data, including the communication within various network protocols. Major cryptographic libraries such as OpenSSL or ARM mbed TLS include at least one implementation of the AES. In this paper, we show that most implementations of the AES present in popular open-source cryptographic libraries are vulnerable to side-channel attacks, even in a network protocol scenario when the attacker has limited control of the input. We present an algorithm for symbolic processing of the AES state for any input configuration where several input bytes are variable and known, while the rest are fixed and unknown as is the case in most secure network protocols. Then, we classify all possible inputs into 25 independent evaluation cases depending on the number of bytes controlled by attacker and the number of rounds that must be attacked to recover the master key. Finally, we describe an optimal algorithm that can be used to recover the master key using Correlation Power Analysis (CPA) attacks. Our experimental results raise awareness of the insecurity of unprotected implementations of the AES used in network protocol stacks

Fault Attacks In Symmetric Key Cryptosystems

Fault attacks are among the well-studied topics in the area of cryptography. These attacks constitute a powerful tool to recover the secret key used in the encryption process. Fault attacks work by forcing a device to work under non-ideal environmental conditions (such as high temperature) or external disturbances (such as glitch in the power supply) while performing a cryptographic operation. The recent trend shows that the amount of research in this direction; which ranges from attacking a particular primitive, proposing a fault countermeasure, to attacking countermeasures; has grown up substantially and going to stay as an active research interest for a foreseeable future. Hence, it becomes apparent to have a comprehensive yet compact study of the (major) works. This work, which covers a wide spectrum in the present day research on fault attacks that fall under the purview of the symmetric key cryptography, aims at fulfilling the absence of an up-to-date survey. We present mostly all aspects of the topic in a way which is not only understandable for a non-expert reader, but also helpful for an expert as a reference