Simple Power Analysis
Simple power analysis (SPA) is a side-channel attack which involves visual examination of graphs of the current used by a device over time. Variations in power consumption occur as the device performs different operations. For example, different instructions performed by a microprocessor will have differing power consumption profiles. As a result, in a power trace from a smart card performing a DES encryption, the sixteen rounds can be seen clearly. Similarly, squaring and multiplication operations in RSA implementations can often be distinguished, enabling an adversary to compute the secret key. Even if the magnitude of the variations in power consumption are small, standard digital oscilloscopes can easily show the data-induced variations. Frequency filters and averaging functions (such as those built into oscilloscopes) are often used to filter out high-frequency components.
Read more about this topic: Power Analysis
Famous quotes containing the words simple, power and/or analysis:
“The work of Henry James has always seemed divisible by a simple dynastic arrangement into three reigns: James I, James II, and the Old Pretender.”
—Philip Guedalla (1889–1944)
“There are old heads in the world who cannot help me by their example or advice to live worthily and satisfactorily to myself; but I believe that it is in my power to elevate myself this very hour above the common level of my life.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Ask anyone committed to Marxist analysis how many angels on the head of a pin, and you will be asked in return to never mind the angels, tell me who controls the production of pins.”
—Joan Didion (b. 1934)