Enhanced Correlation Power Analysis Attack on Smart Card

Power analysis attack has been widely used against cryptographic devices such as smart cards. Compared to the origin differential power analysis (DPA) attack, the later developed correlation power analysis (CPA) is advantageous due to its robustness and efficiency. However, the existing CPA power models are defective in principle as they are either based on a power model using Hamming weight or simplified Hamming distance, both are much deviated from the CMOS circuit power consumption theory. This paper presents an improved power model based on probability distribution of Hamming distance. The experiment of CPA analysis on a smart card chip demonstrates that the proposed model can achieve 10% better results compared to existing models.