Security evaluation against electromagnetic analysis at design time

Abstract

Electromagnetic analysis (EMA) has aroused increasing interest in the side-channel cryptanalysis community. It follows differential power analysis (DPA) constituting a real threat to the security of many cryptographic devices. A design-time security evaluation methodology is proposed to examine electromagnetic (EM) leakage characteristics of secure processors. This EM simulation methodology involves system partitioning, current flow simulation, and data processing to simulate direct EM emissions or modulated emissions sensed by different types of field sensors. The proposed simulation methodology can be easily employed in the framework of an integrated circuit (IC) design flow to perform a systematic EM characteristics analysis.