A Detection Method of Electromagnetic Analysis Attacks Based on Change in Amplitude of Noise Around Integrated Circuits

Abstract

Electromagnetic analysis (EMA) attacks are a type of side-channel attacks that can be performed without opening or modifying a cryptographic module. In this study, we propose a detection method for the measurement of side-channel information, which is performed at the preliminary stage of the analysis of the target device as a countermeasure against EMA attacks performed near integrated circuits (ICs) with cryptographic modules. The presence of an electromagnetic (EM) field probe is detected by analyzing the sampling background noise around the IC using an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) inside the IC and by observing any changes in the EM environment. The proposed method can effectively detect a probe placed 5 cm from the IC package.