International Association for Cryptologic Research

International Association
for Cryptologic Research

CryptoDB

Pantea Kiaei

Publications and invited talks

Year
Venue
Title
2022
TCHES
SoC Root Canal! Root Cause Analysis of Power Side-Channel Leakage in System-on-Chip Designs
Pantea Kiaei Patrick Schaumont
Finding the root cause of power-based side-channel leakage becomes harder when multiple layers of design abstraction are involved. While side-channel leakage originates in processor hardware, the dangerous consequences may only become apparent in the cryptographic software that runs on the processor. This contribution presents RootCanal, a methodology to explain the origin of side-channel leakage in a software program in terms of the underlying micro-architecture and system architecture. We simulate the hardware power consumption at the gate level and perform a non-specific test to identify the logic gates that contribute most sidechannel leakage. Then, we back-annotate those findings to the related activities in the software. The resulting analysis can automatically point out non-trivial causes of side-channel leakages. To illustrate RootCanal’s capabilities, we discuss a collection of case studies.

Coauthors

Pantea Kiaei (1)
Patrick Schaumont (1)