Embedded devices are an integral part of our daily lives. When given physical access to attackers, side channel attacks and attacks that extract data from power, can allow attackers to access secret user information. While much research progress has been made in protecting against side-channel attacks, “the lack of a clear…metric” makes it difficult to compare the effectiveness of different implementations and attacks. Often, evaluators must utilize multiple metrics, each revealing a different context to the side channel resistance analysis. Due to the sheer number and complexity of metrics, it becomes difficult for researchers and designers to gain a comprehensive understanding of metrics from reading literature. The paper possesses a “critical review of the most common metrics proposed so far for the evaluation of side-channel attacks”. Along with the presentation and discussion of the limitations of each metric, the paper includes examples of implementations on the Advanced Encryption Standard and presents their open-source software that details the metrics for the community. The work is a valuable tool for “researchers and practitioners to produce a well-informed security valuation through a better understanding of its supporting and summarizing metrics”.
Author:
Kostas Papagiannopoulos, Ognjen Glamocanin, Melissa Azouaoui, Dorian Ros, Francesco Regazzoni, and Mirjana Stojilovic
