Side channel analysis on an embedded hardware fingerprint biometric comparator & low cost countermeasures
Taoufik Chouta, Tarik Graba, Jean‐Luc Danger, Julien Bringer, Maël Berthier, Yves Bocktaels, M. Favre, Hervé Chabanne · 2014
Biometric identity verification is now commonly used in embedded electronic devices, from consumer products as smartphones to ID documents. As biometric traits are related to individual, the privacy of such personal information is important. Many of these embedded systems rely on an embedded comparison, like Match On Card (MOC) in smart cards, where the stored biometric trait is kept inside the device. In this paper, we extend further a recent work on the vulnerability analysis of an embedded hardware verification module (matcher) against Side Channel Analysis (SCA) techniques, by introducing a new SCA strategy. We present the used SCA approach to exploit the activity leakage of this embedded matcher to retrieve the stored trait. Then we present some simple countermeasures to protect against SCA and we give an evaluation of their performances both in term of security and complexity.