A novel smart card development platform for evaluating physical attacks and PUFs

Abstract

Smart cards are widely used in our life, and they handle sensitive information. The cryptographic modules on smart cards must be updated to support new algorithms and countermeasures against new threats. In this study, we designed a smart card board with an FPGA in order to develop and evaluate embedded circuits for smart cards. A smart card reader board for side-channel attack experimentation was developed in our previous study. By combining these boards and software, we constructed a platform to develop embedded hardware, software, and applications with smart cards for countermeasures against physical attacks and physical unclonable functions. The details of the platform are described in this paper, and side-channel attack experiments demonstrate that a cryptographic key was extracted from electromagnetic radiation on the smart card board, while a countermeasure with regulators and capacitors prevented attacks that exploit power consumption.