A Practical Approach to Power Trace Measurement for Differential Power Analysis Based Attacks

Abstract

This paper addresses the issue of power supply noise in differential power analysis-based attacks on microcontrollers. Using a mixture of analog filters with a special powering technique, the noise effect of the power supply, on the acquired data, is minimized. More, the data acquisition and therefore the DPA is simplified by synchronizing the sampled data with the system clock the microcontroller runs at. This approach provides a simple method of recording power traces for DPA attacks. In the second part of the paper a comparison of classic measurement versus the one suggested here, is presented. This paper presents practical tips for doing exploratory DPA in order to detect security vulnerabilities.