Power and EM Attacks on Passive 13.56 MHz RFID Devices

During the last years, more and more security applications have been developed that are based on passive 13.56MHz RFID devices. Among the most prominent applications are electronic passports and contactless payment systems. This article discusses the effectiveness of power and EM attacks on this kind of devices. It provides an overview of different measurement setups and it presents concrete results of power and EM attacks on two RFID prototype devices. The first device performs AES encryptions in software, while the second one performs AES encryptions in hardware. Both devices have been successfully attacked with less than 1 000 EM traces. These results emphasize the need to include countermeasures into RFID devices.