Electromagnetic Side-Channel Analysis of PRESENT Lightweight Cipher
Nilupulee A Gunathilake, Owen Lo, William J Buchanan, Ahmed Al-Dubai
TL;DR
This study evaluates the electromagnetic side-channel robustness of the PRESENT lightweight cipher using a progression from simple EM analyses (SEMA/SEMFA) to a correlation-based attack (CEMA) focused on the S-box. With 256 waveforms as the minimum for an EM attack and up to 2048 traces for optimization, the researchers demonstrate the ability to recover up to 8 bytes of the 10-byte key, indicating practical leakage paths while noting no leakage for the final bytes under their conditions. The results emphasize the influence of probe geometry and frequency components in EM leakage and suggest that full 31-round PRESENT retains substantial resistance to EM-based key recovery, informing IoT cryptography design and countermeasure considerations. The work also establishes a baseline for future EMA studies on PRESENT across different hardware platforms and domain analyses.
Abstract
Side-channel vulnerabilities pose an increasing threat to cryptographically protected devices. Consequently, it is crucial to observe information leakages through physical parameters such as power consumption and electromagnetic (EM) radiation to reduce susceptibility during interactions with cryptographic functions. EM side-channel attacks are becoming more prevalent. PRESENT is a promising lightweight cryptographic algorithm expected to be incorporated into Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices in the future. This research investigates the EM side-channel robustness of PRESENT using a correlation attack model. This work extends our previous Correlation EM Analysis (CEMA) of PRESENT with improved results. The attack targets the Substitution box (S-box) and can retrieve 8 bytes of the 10-byte encryption key with a minimum of 256 EM waveforms. This paper presents the process of EM attack modelling, encompassing both simple and correlation attacks, followed by a critical analysis.