Physical Side-Channel Attacks: Techniques and Countermeasures

This lecture covers the topic of physical side-channel attacks, focusing on how attackers can exploit physical emanations from devices to extract sensitive information. It begins with an overview of covert channels and the distinction between invasive and non-invasive attacks, emphasizing the growing concern for embedded devices and IoT. The instructor explains passive and active attacks, detailing how power consumption, electromagnetic emissions, and other physical signals can leak information. The lecture delves into specific attack methods, such as simple and differential power analysis, highlighting their effectiveness in revealing cryptographic keys. The discussion also includes fault injection attacks and their implications. Countermeasures against these attacks are presented, including physical hiding techniques and algorithmic masking to obscure the correlation between emanations and secrets. The lecture concludes by stressing the importance of implementing multiple countermeasures to mitigate risks, as well as the evolving nature of these threats in modern computing environments.