Static Power Consumption as a New Side-Channel Analysis Threat to Elliptic Curve Cryptography Implementations
Ievgen Kabin, Zoya Dyka, Alkistis Aikaterini Sigourou, Peter Langendöerfer · 2024
Side-Channel Analysis is a category of security attacks that targets cryptographic devices or systems exploiting unintended information leakage through observable physical side-channels, e.g. power consumption. Side-Channel Analysis primarily aims at the dynamic power consumption of a target device or system during its operation, particularly when cryptographic operations or sensitive computations are being performed. As semiconductor technology nodes shrink, enabling increased transistor density and improved performance, the static current, also known as leakage current tends to increase. This increase in static power consumption can have critical implications for the security of digital systems, particularly in the context of side-channel attacks. In this paper, by examining the static phase within the clock cycle, we demonstrate how a cryptographic key can be extracted from a single power trace measurement. Our research reveals that static currents effectively expose the cryptographic key, a concern that becomes particularly critical in the context of scaled semiconductor technologies.