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One Trace Is All It Takes: Machine Learning-Based Side-Channel Attack on EdDSA

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Security, Privacy, and Applied Cryptography Engineering (SPACE 2019)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 11947))

Abstract

Profiling attacks, especially those based on machine learning proved as very successful techniques in recent years when considering side-channel analysis of block ciphers implementations. At the same time, the results for implementations of public-key cryptosystems are very sparse. In this paper, we consider several machine learning techniques in order to mount a power analysis attack on EdDSA using the curve Curve25519 as implemented in WolfSSL. The results show all considered techniques to be viable and powerful options. Especially convolutional neural networks (CNNs) are effective as we can break the implementation with only a single measurement in the attack phase while requiring less than 500 measurements in the training phase. Interestingly, that same convolutional neural network was recently shown to perform extremely well for attacking the implementation of the AES cipher. Our results show that some common grounds can be established when using deep learning for profiling attacks on distinct cryptographic algorithms and their corresponding implementations.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Pinata Board: https://www.riscure.com/product/pinata-training-target/

  2. 2.

    Current Probe: https://www.riscure.com/product/current-probe/

  3. 3.

    Available at https://zenodo.org/record/1436828#.XRhmfY-xWrw.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands

    Léo Weissbart & Stjepan Picek

  2. Digital Security Group, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

    Léo Weissbart & Lejla Batina

Authors
  1. Léo Weissbart
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  2. Stjepan Picek
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  3. Lejla Batina
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Léo Weissbart , Stjepan Picek or Lejla Batina .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Temasek Laboratories, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore

    Shivam Bhasin

  2. Computer Science Department, Technion, Haifa, Israel

    Avi Mendelson

  3. Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, India

    Mridul Nandi

Appendices

Appendix

A Ed25519 Domain Parameters

Ed25519 domain parameters:

  • Finite field \(F_q\), where \(q = 2^{255}-19\) is the prime.

  • Elliptic curve \(E(F_q)\), Curve25519

  • Base point B

  • Order of the point B, l

  • Hash function H, SHA-512 [13]

  • Key length \(u = 256\) (also length of the prime)

For more details on other parameters of Curve25519 and the corresponding curve equations we refer to Bernstein [2].

B EC Scalar Multiplication

figure b

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Weissbart, L., Picek, S., Batina, L. (2019). One Trace Is All It Takes: Machine Learning-Based Side-Channel Attack on EdDSA. In: Bhasin, S., Mendelson, A., Nandi, M. (eds) Security, Privacy, and Applied Cryptography Engineering. SPACE 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11947. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35869-3_8

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