A multi-threading software countermeasure to mitigate side channel analysis in the time domain
- Authors: Frieslaar, Ibraheem
- Date: 2019
- Subjects: Computer security , Data encryption (Computer science) , Noise generators (Electronics)
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/71152 , vital:29790
- Description: This research is the first of its kind to investigate the utilisation of a multi-threading software-based countermeasure to mitigate Side Channel Analysis (SCA) attacks, with a particular focus on the AES-128 cryptographic algorithm. This investigation is novel, as there has not been a software-based countermeasure relying on multi-threading to our knowledge. The research has been tested on the Atmel microcontrollers, as well as a more fully featured system in the form of the popular Raspberry Pi that utilises the ARM7 processor. The main contributions of this research is the introduction of a multi-threading software based countermeasure used to mitigate SCA attacks on both an embedded device and a Raspberry Pi. These threads are comprised of various mathematical operations which are utilised to generate electromagnetic (EM) noise resulting in the obfuscation of the execution of the AES-128 algorithm. A novel EM noise generator known as the FRIES noise generator is implemented to obfuscate data captured in the EM field. FRIES comprises of hiding the execution of AES-128 algorithm within the EM noise generated by the 512 Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA) from the libcrypto++ and OpenSSL libraries. In order to evaluate the proposed countermeasure, a novel attack methodology was developed where the entire secret AES-128 encryption key was recovered from a Raspberry Pi, which has not been achieved before. The FRIES noise generator was pitted against this new attack vector and other known noise generators. The results exhibited that the FRIES noise generator withstood this attack whilst other existing techniques still leaked out secret information. The visual location of the AES-128 encryption algorithm in the EM spectrum and key recovery was prevented. These results demonstrated that the proposed multi-threading software based countermeasure was able to be resistant to existing and new forms of attacks, thus verifying that a multi-threading software based countermeasure can serve to mitigate SCA attacks.
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- Date Issued: 2019
Recovering AES-128 encryption keys from a Raspberry Pi
- Authors: Frieslaar, Ibraheem , Irwin, Barry V W
- Date: 2017
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/427740 , vital:72459 , https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ibraheem-Frieslaar/publication/320102039_Recovering_AES-128_Encryption_Keys_from_a_Raspberry_Pi/links/59ce34f1aca272b0ec1a4d96/Recovering-AES-128-Encryption-Keys-from-a-Raspberry-Pi.pdf
- Description: This research is the first of its kind to perform a successful side channel analysis attack on a symmetric encryption algorithm executing on a Raspberry Pi. It is demonstrated that the AES-128 encryption algorithm of the Crypto++ library is vulnerable against the Correlation Power Analysis (CPA) attack. Furthermore, digital processing techniques such as dynamic time warping and filtering are used to recovery the full encryption key. In Addition, it is illustrated that the area above and around the CPU of the Raspberry Pi leaks out critical and secret information.
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- Date Issued: 2017
Developing a Multi Platform Countermeasure to Ensure a Secure Home
- Authors: Frieslaar, Ibraheem , Irwin, Barry V W
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/427772 , vital:72461 , https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ibraheem-Fries-laar/publication/312219190_Developing_a_Multi_Platform_Countermeasure_to_Ensure_a_Secure_Home/links/587747d508ae8fce492fb5e2/Developing-a-Multi-Platform-Countermeasure-to-Ensure-a-Secure-Home.pdf
- Description: This research proposes an investigation into the side channel analysis attacks against the AES algorithm on high powered devices. Currently the research field into this aspect is fairly new and there is room for more information to be discovered. This research proposes using a Raspberry Pi in conjunction with a Software Defined Radio to capture electromagnetic emanations in the low and high frequency domains. Two well-known side channel attacks will be used to recover the secret information based on the electromagnetic emanations. Furthermore, this research proposes investigating into a possible software countermeasure by using the high-powered devices features such as multi-threading.
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- Date Issued: 2016
An investigation into the signals leakage from a smartcard based on different runtime code
- Authors: Frieslaar, Ibraheem , Irwin, Barry V W
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/427845 , vital:72466 , https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ibraheem-Fries-laar/publication/307918229_An_investigation_into_the_signals_leakage_from_a_smartcard_based_on_different_runtime_code/links/57d1996008ae0c0081e04fd5/An-investigation-into-the-signals-leakage-from-a-smartcard-based-on-different-runtime-code.pdf
- Description: This paper investigates the power leakage of a smartcard. It is intended to answer two vital questions: what information is leaked out when different characters are used as output; and does the length of the output affect the amount of the information leaked. The investigation determines that as the length of the output is increased more bus lines are switched from a precharge state to a high state. This is related to the output array in the code increasing its length. Furthermore, this work shows that the output for different characters generates a different pattern. This is due to the fact that various characters needs different amount of bytes to be executed since they have different binary value. Additionally, the information leaked out can be directly linked to the smartcard’s interpreter.
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- Date Issued: 2015