Capacity of EM Side Channel Created by Instruction Executions in a Processor

• Published in: 2019 IEEE 10th Annual Information Technology, Electronics and Mobile Communication Conference (IEMCON) pp. 0340 - 0345
• Main Authors: Yilmaz, Baki Berkay, Prvulovic, Milos, Zajic, Alenka
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 01-10-2019
• Subjects: Computational modeling; Field programmable gate arrays; Instruction sets; IP networks; Markov processes; Mathematical model; Signal to noise ratio
• ISSN: 2644-3163
• DOI: 10.1109/IEMCON.2019.8936144

This paper proposes a methodology to estimate leakage capacity of electromagnetic (EM) side channels created by execution of instruction sequences (e.g. a function, a procedure, or a program) in a processor. We propose to use Markov Source model to include the dependencies that exist in instruction sequence since each program code is written systematically to serve a specific task. The channel input sources are considered as the emitted EM signals while executing an instruction. We derive a mathematical relationship between the emanated instruction power (IP) and total emanated signal power while running a microbenchmark to obtain the channel input powers. The results demonstrate that leakages could be severe enough for a dedicated attacker to obtain some prominent information.