The Power of Electromagnetic Analysis on Embedded Cryptographic Ics

Electromagnetic analysis (EMA) can be used to retrieve secret information by analyzing the electric and/or magnetic fields emanating from a Cryptographic IC. It has been becoming an important side channel cryptanalysis attack on many cryptographic implementations following differential power analysis (DPA), thus constitutes a real threat to Embedded Cryptographic ICs security. In this article, it is shown that the secret key used in an IC can be revealed based on measuring radiated emissions. In the work presented here, it was investigated how near-field EM attacks can be conducted even with a simple hand-made coil. It was shown that the signal is better when the probe is smaller and closer to the ICs. The DEMA and DPA were compared in this work. The far-field emissions of a Cryptographic IC will be measured in reverberation chamber in the future work.