Power analysis attack: A vulnerability to smart card security

Abstract

A major breakthrough in side channel attacks came up when analysis of power consumption by a cryptographic device led to discovery of the secret key. This analysis technique popularly known as Power Analysis Attack is now one of the most volatile and successful side channel attacks. This technique uses the power consumed by a cryptographic system as the main parameter to identify the cryptographic algorithms as well as the secret key used. The power traces of the system are statistically analyzed and the correlation between these traces and the cryptographic technique is explored to break the security. This attack has been successfully carried out on various cryptographic algorithms like DES, AES, RSA and ECC which are implemented on cryptographic devices such smart cards, FPGA, DSP, ASIC etc. In this paper we present a review on the power analysis attack and its techniques. Also, a brief detail on some of the power analysis attacks on smart card and FPGA have been presented. Couple of methods to improve such attacks has also been mentioned.