Photonic side channel attacks against RSA

Elad Carmon, Jean Pierre Seifert, Avishai Wool

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

Abstract

This paper describes the first attack utilizing the photonic side channel against a public-key crypto-system. We evaluated three common implementations of RSA modular exponentiation, all using the Karatsuba multiplication method. We discovered that the key length had marginal impact on resilience to the attack: attacking a 2048-bit key required only 9% more decryption attempts than a 1024-bit key. We found that the most dominant parameter impacting the attacker's effort is the minimal block size at which the Karatsuba method reverts to naive multiplication: even for parameter values as low as 32 or 64 bits our attacks achieve 100% success rate with under 10,000 decryption operations. Somewhat surprisingly, we discovered that Montgomery's Ladder - commonly perceived as the most resilient of the three implementations to side-channel attacks - was actually the most susceptible: for 2048-bit keys, our attack reveals 100% of the secret key bits with as few as 4000 decryptions.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 2017 IEEE International Symposium on Hardware Oriented Security and Trust, HOST 2017
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Pages74-78
Number of pages5
ISBN (Electronic)9781538639283
DOIs
StatePublished - 16 Jun 2017
Event10th IEEE International Symposium on Hardware Oriented Security and Trust, HOST 2017 - McLean, United States
Duration: 1 May 20175 May 2017

Publication series

NameProceedings of the 2017 IEEE International Symposium on Hardware Oriented Security and Trust, HOST 2017

Conference

Conference10th IEEE International Symposium on Hardware Oriented Security and Trust, HOST 2017
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityMcLean
Period1/05/175/05/17

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Computer Networks and Communications
  • Hardware and Architecture
  • Safety, Risk, Reliability and Quality

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