Error Tolerance based Single Interesting Point Side Channel CPA Distinguisher

Abstract

The efficiency can be significantly improved if the attacker uses interesting points to perform Correlation Power Analysis (CPA). The prerequisite for this is that the attacker knows the positions of interesting points. However, it is difficult for the attacker to accurately find the locations of interesting points if he only has a small number of power traces. In this paper, we propose a Frequency based Interesting Points Selection algorithm (FIPS) to select interesting points under the condition that the attacker only has a very small number of power traces. Moreover, an error tolerant Single Interesting Point based CPA (SIP-CPA) is proposed. Experiments on AES algorithm implemented on an AT89S52 single chip and power trace set of DPA contest v1 of DES algorithm implemented on the Side Channel Attack Standard Evaluation Board (SASEBO) show that, our SIP-CPA can significantly improve the efficiency of CPA.