Case Study: Horizontal Side-Channel Analysis Attack against Elliptic Curve Scalar Multiplication Accelerator under Laser Illumination
This work addresses security vulnerabilities in cryptographic chips, particularly for devices using scaled technologies, but it is incremental as it builds on existing attack methods with a new twist.
The study investigated a combined side-channel analysis and laser illumination attack on an elliptic curve scalar multiplication accelerator, finding that laser illumination increased power consumption but did not significantly improve attack success, though focusing on static current might enhance it.
Devices employing cryptographic approaches have to be resistant to physical attacks. Side-Channel Analysis (SCA) and Fault Injection (FI) attacks are frequently used to reveal cryptographic keys. In this paper, we present a combined SCA and laser illumination attack against an Elliptic Curve Scalar Multiplication accelerator using a differential probe from Teledyne LeCroy. Our experiments show that laser illumination increases the power consumption of the chip, especially its static power consumption but the success of the horizontal power analysis attacks was changed insignificantly. We assume that using a laser with a high laser beam power and concentrating on measuring and analysing only static current can improve the attack success significantly. The horizontal attacks against public key cryptosystems exploiting the Static Consumption under Laser Illumination (SCuLI attacks) are novel and their potential is not investigated yet. These attacks can be especially dangerous against cryptographic chips manufactured in scaled technologies. If such attacks are feasible, appropriate countermeasures have to be proposed in the future.