A Comparison of Backscattering, EM, and Power Side-Channels and Their Performance in Detecting Software and Hardware Intrusions

Abstract

Side-channel analysis is a powerful tool from both an attacker’s and defender’s perspective. Understanding similarities and differences among types of side-channels is a necessary step in better utilization of side-channels. This paper addresses this problem by modeling and quantitatively comparing backscattering, electromagnetic (EM), and power side-channels and discusses the performance of these three side-channels for detecting software malware and hardware Trojans (HT). The results show that for larger changes in the signals, such as those caused by malware intrusions, all three side-channels perform similarly. However, when smaller changes need to be observed, such as those caused by HTs, the backscattering side-channel outperforms EM and power side-channels.