How to Explain Side-Channel Leakage to Your Kids

This paper will attempt to explain some of the side-channel attack techniques in a fashion that is easily comprehensible by the layman. What follows is a presentation of three different attacks (power, timing and fault attacks) that can be carried out on cryptographic devices such as smart-cards. For each of the three attacks covered, a puzzle and it‘s solution will be given, which will act as an analogy to the attack. How these attacks can be applied to real devices will also be discussed.