Computer Engineering Cider Seminars

Although mobile Java code is frequently executed on many wireless devices, the susceptibility to electromagnetic (EM) attacks is largely unknown. If analysis of EM waves emanating from the wireless device during a cryptographic computation does leak sufficient information, it may be possible for an attacker to reconstruct the secret key. Possession of the secret cryptographic key would render all future wireless communications insecure and cause further potential problems such as identity theft. This research demonstrates, for the first time, a real EM-based attack on a PDA running Rijndael and elliptic curve cryptography. A new frequency-based differential EM analysis, which computes the spectrogram, is presented. Additionally a low energy countermeasure for symmetric key cryptography is presented which avoids large overheads of table regeneration or excessive storage. Unlike previous research the new differential analysis does not require perfect alignment of EM traces, thus supporting attacks on real embedded systems. This research is important for future wireless embedded systems which will increasingly demand higher levels of security.

Catherine Gebotys received the B.A.Sc. degree in Engineering Science in 1982 and the M.A.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering in 1984, both from University of Toronto. She received the PhD degree in Electrical Engineering in 1991 from the University of Waterloo. She worked at Litton Systems Canada Ltd from Jan 1985 to Dec 1986 in the area of CAD for VLSI and chip design. From Jan 1987 to August 1989 she was a Research Associate in the VLSI group, Dept of Electrical Engineering, University of Waterloo. She is currently an Associate Professor in the Dept of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Waterloo. She has served on several technical program committees, received a best paper award, served as Associate Editor, and collaborated with various Companies (RIM, COMDEV, Motorola, Alcatel). She received the CITO Champions of Innovation Award and has several Patents pending. Her research interests include security in embedded systems and PDAs, power/electromagnetic analysis of cryptographic algorihtms, reconfigurable computing models, global optimization approaches to compilation for DSP processors, and systems synthesis.