Analysis of Electromagnetic Information Leakage Based on Cryptographic Integrated Circuits

Area of Science:

• Electrical Engineering
• Computer Science
• Information Security

Background:

• Cryptographic algorithms rely on secret keys stored in device registers for information security.
• Electromagnetic (EM) emanations from devices can inadvertently leak sensitive information, including secret keys.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose and validate an electromagnetic information leakage model.
• To investigate the correlation between EM leakage signals and cryptographic secret keys.
• To develop a method for recovering secret keys using EM side-channel analysis.

Main Methods:

• Modeling registers as electric dipole sources of EM leakage.
• Developing an equivalent circuit for magnetic field probes to measure EM signals.
• Establishing a functional relationship for the EM information leakage model.
• Utilizing multiple linear regression for secret key recovery.
• Evaluating model effectiveness using guess entropy.

Main Results:

• The proposed EM leakage model accurately describes the relationship between EM signals and secret keys.
• Near-field tests in an indoor environment confirmed the model's validity.
• The developed model successfully recovered secret keys from cryptographic algorithms.

Conclusions:

• The proposed electromagnetic leakage model is effective for analyzing information leakage from cryptographic devices.
• This research validates the use of EM side-channel analysis for secret key recovery.
• The findings contribute to enhancing information security by understanding and mitigating EM leakage vulnerabilities.