The Impact of the Implementation Style on Power Consumption and Security in Embedded Cryptosystems

Abstract

This paper presents for the first time current consumption analysis related to DPA attacks targeting a low-power 32-bit ARM processor core. The paper summarizes power consumption and DPA attack results for various software implementations (C, ARM 32-bit assembly, ARM 16-bit Thumb) of the well known DES algorithm. The results show that the DPA attack success is directly related to the number of traces collected, the number of bits targeted by the correlation function, the implementation style, and the type of instructions and operands. The measurement platform used to collect real-time current and power measurements at the power supply pin of the ARM board is also presented