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Get your hands off my laptop: physical side-channel key-extraction attacks on PCs

Get your hands off my laptop: physical side-channel key-extraction attacks on PCs We demonstrate physical side-channel attacks on a popular software implementation of RSA and ElGamal, running on laptop computers. Our attacks use novel side channels, based on the observation that the “ground” electric potential, in many computers, fluctuates in a computation-dependent way. An attacker can measure this signal by touching exposed metal on the computer’s chassis with a plain wire, or even with a bare hand. The signal can also be measured on the ground shield at the remote end of Ethernet, USB and display cables. Through suitable cryptanalysis and signal processing, we have extracted 4096-bit RSA keys and 3072-bit ElGamal keys from laptops, via each of these channels, as well as via power analysis and electromagnetic probing. Despite the GHz-scale clock rate of the laptops and numerous noise sources, the full attacks require a few seconds of measurements using Medium Frequency (MF) signals (around 2 MHz), or one hour using Low Frequency (LF) signals (up to 40  kHz). http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Journal of Cryptographic Engineering Springer Journals

Get your hands off my laptop: physical side-channel key-extraction attacks on PCs

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References (35)

Publisher
Springer Journals
Copyright
Copyright © 2015 by Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
Subject
Computer Science; Data Encryption; Circuits and Systems; Computer Communication Networks; Communications Engineering, Networks; Data Structures, Cryptology and Information Theory; Operating Systems
ISSN
2190-8508
eISSN
2190-8516
DOI
10.1007/s13389-015-0100-7
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

We demonstrate physical side-channel attacks on a popular software implementation of RSA and ElGamal, running on laptop computers. Our attacks use novel side channels, based on the observation that the “ground” electric potential, in many computers, fluctuates in a computation-dependent way. An attacker can measure this signal by touching exposed metal on the computer’s chassis with a plain wire, or even with a bare hand. The signal can also be measured on the ground shield at the remote end of Ethernet, USB and display cables. Through suitable cryptanalysis and signal processing, we have extracted 4096-bit RSA keys and 3072-bit ElGamal keys from laptops, via each of these channels, as well as via power analysis and electromagnetic probing. Despite the GHz-scale clock rate of the laptops and numerous noise sources, the full attacks require a few seconds of measurements using Medium Frequency (MF) signals (around 2 MHz), or one hour using Low Frequency (LF) signals (up to 40  kHz).

Journal

Journal of Cryptographic EngineeringSpringer Journals

Published: May 6, 2015

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