Side-channel Testing Infrastructures in Preand Post-Silicon Settings

Eren, Ramazan Kaan

Etd

Side-channel Testing Infrastructures in Preand Post-Silicon Settings

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Side-channel analysis methods are growing diverse in practice and more effective in results. Countermeasures against side-channel attacks are able to protect secure hardware devices up to a certain level. Still, some countermeasures are rather hard to penetrate. However, all proposed countermeasures come with a trade-off in area, power, or speed. This situation brings forth the importance of side-channel leakage assessment methods in an effort to understand the origins of the information leakage. For power side-channels, leakage assessment methods range from the early design phases to post-silicon. As the abstraction level of the design goes from early phases to late phases or to post-silicon, the amount and the accuracy of the information that can be extracted from the assessment grows. In addition, a design flaw that is found in later phases can have severe consequences in terms of time and resources to recover from. Therefore, finding a design flaw in the early design phases is advantageous. But, this time, the assessment is short in input material diversity, and this causes inaccurate assessments. In one way or another, effective tooling can help understand the origins of side-channel leakage. This thesis presents two tools, Side-channel Observer Verification Intellectual Property (SCO VIP) and Saidoyoki, that can help in side-channel leakage assessment efforts in pre- and post-silicon settings. SCO VIP is a functional verification IP that is written for an industry standard, Universal Verification Methodology (UVM). SCO VIP can perform side-channel leakage assessments in register-transfer layer (RTL). Another tool is the Saidoyoki board. Saidoyoki is a highly configurable printed circuit board that houses two in-house designed cryptographic chips and all needed infrastructure to perform side-channel analysis or post-silicon leakage assessment. This thesis also presents two cases in which the capabilities of Saidoyoki and SCO VIP are demonstrated.

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