Make Some Noise: Unleashing the Power of Convolutional Neural Networks for Profiled Side-channel Analysis

J.H. Kim, Stjepan Picek, Annelie Heuser, Shivam Bhasin, Alan Hanjalic

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleScientificpeer-review

183 Citations (Scopus)
221 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Profiled side-channel analysis based on deep learning, and more precisely Convolutional Neural Networks, is a paradigm showing significant potential. The results, although scarce for now, suggest that such techniques are even able to break cryptographic implementations protected with countermeasures. In this paper, we start by proposing a new Convolutional Neural Network instance able to reach high performance for a number of considered datasets. We compare our neural network with the one designed for a particular dataset with masking countermeasure and we show that both are good designs but also that neither can be considered as a superior to the other one.
Next, we address how the addition of artificial noise to the input signal can be actually beneficial to the performance of the neural network. Such noise addition is equivalent to the regularization term in the objective function. By using this technique, we are able to reduce the number of measurements needed to reveal the secret key by orders of magnitude for both neural networks. Our new convolutional neural network instance with added noise is able to break the implementation protected with the random delay countermeasure by using only 3 traces in the attack phase. To further strengthen our experimental results, we investigate the performance with a varying number of training samples, noise levels, and epochs. Our findings show that adding noise is beneficial throughout all training set sizes and epochs.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)148-179
Number of pages32
JournalIACR Transactions on Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems
Volume2019
Issue number3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2019

Keywords

  • Convolutional Neural Networks
  • Gaussian noise
  • Machine learning
  • Side-channel analysis

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Make Some Noise: Unleashing the Power of Convolutional Neural Networks for Profiled Side-channel Analysis'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this