POWER ANALYSIS ATTACKS FOR CHEAPSKATES

Power analysis attacks present a devious method of cracking cryptographic systems. But looking at papers published in this field show that often the equipment used is fairly expensive: the typical oscilloscope used often has at least a 1 GSPS sampling rate, and then various probes and amplifiers also add to this cost. What is a poor researcher to do without such tools? This presentation will give a detailed description of how to setup a power analysis lab for a few hundred dollars, one that provides sufficient performance to attack real devices. It's based on some open-source hardware & software I developed, and is small enough to fit in your pocket. This will be demonstrated live against a microcontroller implementing AES, with details provided so attendees can duplicate the demonstration. This includes an open-hardware design for the capture board, open-source Python tools for doing the capture, and open-source example attacks. Underlying theory behind side-channel attacks will be presented, giving attendees a complete picture of how such attacks work.

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