General Information
Side-channel attack (SCA) is a class of attacks which targets the physical implementation of a secure system by measuring artifacts of the computation or by influencing the computation in order to retrieve secret information. SCA poses a serious threat to smart devices, Internet of Things, cars, mobile devices, etc. This course explores side-channel attack techniques as well as countermeasures for hardware and software implementations of cryptographic algorithms. Topics include timing and cache attacks, power and electromagnetic analysis, machine learning based attacks, side-channel leakage evaluation, hiding and masking countermeasures. This course provides a comprehensive team-based research and development experience through in-class labs, projects and presentations.
| Type | Day | Time | Location | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lectures | Thursday | 4:30 pm - | 7:10 pm | Innovation 203 and online |
Documents
- Syllabus: (pdf)
Instructor
Dr. Jens-Peter Kaps
Office: Engineering Building, Room 3222
Email: jkaps'at'gmu.edu
Recommended Prerequisites
Any basic cryptography course such as: ECE 476, CYSE 476, CS 487, IT 466, CYSE 550, CS 587, ECE 646, ISA 656, AIT 682, or permission of instructor.
Knowledge of Python is required for the labs.
Recommended Textbook
- Mangard, Stefan, Oswald, Elisabeth, Popp, Thomas, Power Analysis Attacks: Revealing the Secrets of Smart Cards, Springer-Verlag, 2007, ISBN: 978-0-387-30857-9
Supplementary Textbooks
- Colin O'Flynn and Jasper van Woudenberg, The Hardware Hacking Handbook: Breaking Embedded Security with Hardware Attacks, No Starch Press, 2021, ISBN: 978-1-593-27874-8
- Christof Paar, Jan Pelzl, Tim Güneysu, Understanding Cryptography, From Established Symmetric and Asymmetric Ciphers to Post-Quantum Algorithms, Second Edition, Springer, 2024, ISBN 978-3-662-69006-2
- William Stallings, Cryptography and Network Security, 8th edition, Pearson, 2020, ISBN: 978-0-1367-0722-6
- Alfred J. Menezes, Paul C. van Oorschot, and Scott A. Vanstone, Handbook of Applied Cryptography, CRC Press, Inc.; 1996, ISBN: 0-84-938523-7.