Overview of the Side Channel Attacks

The security of cryptographic algorithms such as block ciphers and public-key algorithms relies on the secrecy of the key. Traditionally, when cryptanalysists examine the security of a cryptographic algorithm, they try to recover the secret key by observing the inputs and outputs of the algorithm. Assuming this type of attack models, cryptologists have made commonly-used cryptographic algorithms secure against such attacks. However, a real computing device not only generates the outputs specified in algorithms but also inevitably produces some other information such as timing and power. These types of information, called side-channel information, can be exploited in side-channel attacks to retrieve secret keys. Side channel attacks have successfully broken many algorithms.