A calculation simplified DPA attack based on reduced template

Abstract

In a traditional template attack, during the template building phase, a large amount of calculation is usually needed, or, what is worse, some impossible calculation might be occurred to get the covariance matrix. Through a deep researching of template attack techniques, this paper has improved the template building method and proposed a new way which greatly simplified the template structure to avoid these problems. Also, we independently completed the development of a side channel power data acquisition platform and compiled the supporting side channel attack software. Targeting at the AES encryption algorithm implemented on a Mage16 single-chip board, we carried out a DPA attack based on template built by our method, the experimental results show that this method can effectively avoid the numerical problems that may be occurred in the traditional template attack, and compared to the ordinary DPA attacks the number of energy traces required by the attacks reduced substantially. It is strongly proved that the DPA attack based on our template is effective and practical.