Side Channel Attacks: Measures and Countermeasures

The main focus of modern cryptanalysis is on breaking the implementation of cryptographic algorithms as opposed to traditional attacks which primarily target on mathematically breaking the algorithms. For over the last decade these new trend of attacks, Side Channel Attacks (SCAs), are becoming increasingly popular and pose a serious threat to cryptographic devices. Researchers proposing countermeasures and adversaries findingout new means of access to the system ultimately made this a continuous race. To best of our knowledge, not a perfect solution exists to counter all such attacks. However, by using appropriate countermeasures it is possible to make the task of the attacker harder. This paper analyzes the prevailing vulnerabilities in side channels considering their destructive effects and critically evaluates the proposed countermeasures.