An introduction to side channel cryptanalysis of RSA

Abstract

Cryptology is the art and science of designing (cryptography) and breaking (cryptanalysis) ciphers based on mathematical tools and researcher creativity. In the middle of the 1990's a new cryptanalysis technique emerged: implementation cryptanalysis or sidechannel cryptanalysis. This technique does not directly attack the strong mathematical constructs of cryptographic algorithms, but rather focuses on implementation details of an algorithm on a physical system. Cryptographic algorithms that withstood years of mathematical cryptanalysis were proven by various researchers to be vulnerable to such attacks, especially in resource-constrained physical systems, such as embedded systems. This article provides an introduction to side-channel cryptanalysis and focuses on sidechannel attacks on two implementation variants of the RSA encryption algorithm.