Noise Reduction in Side Channel Attack Using Fourth-Order Cumulant

• Published in: IEEE transactions on information forensics and security Vol. 2; no. 4; pp. 710 - 720
• Main Authors: Le, T.H., Clediere, J., Serviere, C., Lacoume, J.L.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01-12-2007; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Channels; Correlation power analysis (CPA); Coupling circuits; Cryptography; data encryption standard (DES); differential power analysis (DPA); Electromagnetic analysis; Encryption; Energy consumption; fourth-order cumulant; Gaussian; Gaussian noise; higher order statistics; Integrated circuit noise; Noise; Noise reduction; Power consumption; Preprocessing; side channel attack; Signal analysis; Smart cards; Timing
• ISSN: 1556-6013; 1556-6021
• DOI: 10.1109/TIFS.2007.910252

Side channel attacks exploit physical information leaked during the operation of a cryptographic device (e.g., a smart card). The confidential data, which can be leaked from side channels, are timing of operations, power consumption, and electromagnetic emanation. In this paper, we propose a preprocessing method based on the fourth-order cumulant, which aims to improve the performance of side channel attacks. It takes advantages of the Gaussian and nonGaussian properties, that respectively characterize the noise and the signal, to remove the effects due to Gaussian noise coupled into side channel signals. The proposed method is then applied to analyze the electromagnetic signals of a synthesized application-specific integrated circuit during a data encryption standard operation. The theoretical and experimental results show that our method significantly reduces the number of side channel signals needed to detect the encryption key.