Comparison of electromagnetic side-channel energy available to the attacker from different computer systems

This paper evaluates electromagnetic (EM) side-channel energy (ESE) available to the attacker from several different computer systems. In particular, we present measured ESE for several common instructions executed on a laptop, a desktop, and an FPGA at several different frequencies. The results show that ESE measurements are repeatable across a range of frequencies, and that similar frequencies result in similar ESE. While FPGA ESE is smaller than desktop or laptop ESE, similar trends are found between all three systems. The presented results can be useful to computer designers who wish to find out which parts of the design are most susceptible to EM side-channel vulnerabilities, and to software developers who need to know which variations in program behavior are most likely to allow successful side-channel attacks, especially for behaviors that are consistently vulnerable across processor generations and across processor manufacturers.