Assignment

As a final assignment for this walkthrough, there should a detailed report on some component of power analysis including a demonstration and what effect it has on possible attack vectors. A few categories of what we can look at along with some example topics:

  • Breaking an encryption algorithm which is not demonstrated in this walkthrough. Possibly combined with some protections against power analysis. Have a look at the Compiling your own algorithms instructions. Some examples of interesting algorithms are:
  • Providing multiple protections on RSA or AES along with analysis of their effectiveness and remaining attack vectors.
  • Breaking algorithms by using the data power analysis provides us in new ways.
    • Apply machine learning to the data provides by a power-trace of an encryption algorithm and determine its effectiveness.
    • Look further into optimizing the amount of power traces needed to do a correlation power analysis attack. How many traces can reliably crack a certain algorithm? Can this be improved in some way?

These are just a few examples within the many possible topics. If another creative idea pops up, feel free to give it a shot. The only requirements of the report are a reproducible demonstration and explanation of your method and a description of (remaining) attack vectors through power analysis.

Grading / What will be looked at

There are a few important topics to which is going to be paid attention whilst grading.

Complexity and creativity of method

Most important is the complexity and creativity of your method. These are best formulated by the following two questions:

  1. What level of difficulty is your attack vector or method of execution?
  2. How much of this method was already pre-done by other people?

This also leads to the point that it is very important to cite sources for your attacks. Any found plagiarism will not be tolerated. If one uses a piece of text, code or method (almost) directly copied or cited from a source, cite that (primary) source. If one adapts a piece of text, code or method from a source, cite as Adapted from ....

Level of explanation and writing

Apart from having a great and creative method, it is also very important to make clear why and why your method was so great and creative. Go into depth on the steps of your method and why those steps help reach the desired result. You can assume that the reader has also followed this walkthrough and albeit has some preliminary knowledge.

Reproducibility

The final important part of your assignment on power analysis is going to be reproducibility. How easy is it for the people checking your assignment to reproduce your method(/results). Is your code readable? Is there some clear documentation on compiling code, executing an attack or installing dependencies? It is not needed to write step-by-step instructions yourself for most of these steps, but it is important to write an overview on installing dependencies (linking to the installation guide of that dependency), compiling instructions (when needed) and attack execution instructions.

Good luck and have fun!