Vehicle remote keyless entry systems and engine immobilisers: do not believe the insurer that this technology is perfect

In the 1990s, governments put pressure on motor vehicle manufacturers to provide better security for vehicles. Thieves could steal cars and lorries with relative ease. The manufacturers responded by introducing electronic systems to make it more difficult for vehicles to be stolen without the key. However, as with most forms of technology, the software can be bypassed. In recent years, thieves have manipulated weaknesses in the technology, so that vehicles can be stolen without the key

Evaluation of the Single Keybit Template Attack

Side Channel leakage is a serious threat to secure devices. Cryptographic information extraction is possible after examining any one of the various side channels, including electromagnetic. This work contributes a new method to achieve such a purpose. The Single Keybit Template Attack (SKTA) is introduced as a means to extract encryption keys from embedded processors and other integrated circuit devices performing DES encryptions by passively monitoring and exploiting unintentional RF emissions. Key extraction is accomplished by creating two templates for each bit value of the key based on instantaneous amplitude responses as a device executes DES operations. The resultant templates are input to a Maximum Likelihood processor for subsequent template discrimination with RF emissions captured from a target device. Plaintext and ciphertext are not necessary for SKTA to function. Using 8-bit microcontroller devices and experimentally collected side channel signals, key extraction is possible after examination of approximately 300 RF emission traces. After consideration of SKTA\u27s capabilities, embedded processors using DES to process sensitive data warrants reconsideration

A Thorough Evaluation of RAMBAM

The application of masking, widely regarded as the most robust and reliable countermeasure against Side-Channel Analysis (SCA) attacks, has been the subject of extensive research across a range of cryptographic algorithms, especially AES. However, the implementation cost associated with applying such a countermeasure can be significant and even in some scenarios infeasible due to considerations such as area and latency overheads, as well as the need for fresh randomness to ensure the security properties of the resulting design. Most of these overheads originate from the ability to maintain security in the presence of physical defaults such as glitches and transitions. Among several schemes with a trade-off between such overheads, RAMBAM, presented at CHES 2022, offers an ultra-low latency in terms of the number of clock cycles. It is dedicated to the AES and utilizes redundant representations of the finite field elements to enhance protection against both passive and active physical attacks. In this paper, we have a deeper look at this technique and provide a comprehensive analysis. The original authors reported that the number of required traces to mount a successful attack increases exponentially with the size of the redundant representation. We however examine their scheme from theoretical point of view. More specifically, we investigate the relationship between RAMBAM and the well-established Boolean masking and, based on this, prove the insecurity of RAMBAM. Through the examples and use cases, we assess the leakage of the scheme in practice and use verification tools to demonstrate that RAMBAM does not necessarily offer adequate protection against SCA attacks neither in theory nor in practice. Confirmed by real-world experiments, we additionally highlight that -- if no dedicated facility is incorporated -- the RAMBAM designs are susceptible to fault-injection attacks despite providing some degree of protection against a sophisticated attack vector, i.e., SIFA

High-Performance Design Patterns and File Formats for Side-Channel Analysis

Data and instruction dependent power consumption can reveal cryptographic secrets by means of Side-Channel Analysis (SCA). Consequently, manufacturers and evaluation labs perform thorough testing of cryptographic implementations to confirm their security. Unfortunately, the computation and storage needs for the resulting measurement data can be substantial and at times, limit the scope of their analyses. Therefore, it is surprising that only few publications study the efficient computation and storage of side-channel analysis related data. To address this gap, we discuss high-performance design patterns and how they align with characteristics of different file formats. More specifically, we perform an in-depth analysis of common side-channel analysis algorithms and how they can be implemented for maximum performance. At the same time, we focus on storage requirements and how to reduce them, by applying compression and chunking. In addition, we investigate and benchmark popular SCA frameworks. Moreover, we propose SCARR, a proof of concept SCA framework based on the file format Zarr, that outperforms all considered frameworks in several common algorithms (SNR, TVLA, CPA, MIA) by a factor of about two compared to the thus far fastest framework for a given profile. Most notably, in all tested scenarios, we are faster even with file compression, than other frameworks without compression. We are convinced that the presented design patterns and comparative study will benefit the greater side-channel community, help practitioners to improve their own frameworks, and reduce data storage requirements, associated costs, and lower computation/energy demands of SCA, as required to perform more testing at scale

Radio Frequency Based Programmable Logic Controller Anomaly Detection

The research goal involved developing improved methods for securing Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) devices against unauthorized entry and mitigating the risk of Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) attack by detecting malicious software and/or trojan hardware. A Correlation Based Anomaly Detection (CBAD) process was developed to enable 1) software anomaly detection discriminating between various operating conditions to detect malfunctioning or malicious software, firmware, etc., and 2) hardware component discrimination discriminating between various hardware components to detect malfunctioning or counterfeit, trojan, etc., components

Exploitation of Unintentional Information Leakage from Integrated Circuits

Unintentional electromagnetic emissions are used to recognize or verify the identity of a unique integrated circuit (IC) based on fabrication process-induced variations in a manner analogous to biometric human identification. The effectiveness of the technique is demonstrated through an extensive empirical study, with results presented indicating correct device identification success rates of greater than 99:5%, and average verification equal error rates (EERs) of less than 0:05% for 40 near-identical devices. The proposed approach is suitable for security applications involving commodity commercial ICs, with substantial cost and scalability advantages over existing approaches. A systematic leakage mapping methodology is also proposed to comprehensively assess the information leakage of arbitrary block cipher implementations, and to quantitatively bound an arbitrary implementation\u27s resistance to the general class of differential side channel analysis techniques. The framework is demonstrated using the well-known Hamming Weight and Hamming Distance leakage models, and approach\u27s effectiveness is demonstrated through the empirical assessment of two typical unprotected implementations of the Advanced Encryption Standard. The assessment results are empirically validated against correlation-based differential power and electromagnetic analysis attacks

Cryptographic key management for the vehicles of tomorrow

The automotive industry is undergoing a major transformation process in which nearly every part of the vehicle is becoming digital and connected. Modern vehicles are often connected to the internet, feature several wireless interfaces and will soon communicate directly with surrounding vehicles and roadside infrastructure using V2X technology. However, this transformation has not yet been paralleled by the development of techniques or standards which address the cyber security challenges posed by these systems. The automotive industry has historically failed to use secure cryptography or appropriate key management techniques and there is no sign that things have improved. In this thesis, we present several new cryptographic and key management flaws in an existing automotive immobiliser system and we develop two new V2X architectures for improving the safety and privacy of tomorrow’s connected and autonomous vehicles. Specifically, we study the AUT64 automotive block cipher and its associated authentication protocol in a real-world immobiliser system. Despite having a 120~bit key, we find a number of flaws in the system which we combine to present several practical key-recovery attacks. Our first new V2X architecture, IFAL, provides a practical and secure improvement to the leading European standard for V2X. IFAL introduces a new certificate issuance mechanism that eliminates the trade-off between pseudonym duration and bandwidth. Our second architecture, VDAA, addresses the need for efficient techniques that preserve vehicle privacy despite dishonest or colluding certificate authorities