Software Implementation of AES-128: Side Channel Attacks Based on Power Traces Decomposition

Side Channel Attacks (SCAs), an attack that exploits the physical information generated when an encryption algorithm is executed on a device to recover the key, has become one of the key threats to the security of encrypted devices. Recently, with the development of deep learning, deep learning techniques have been applied to SCAs with good results on publicly available dataset experiences. In this paper, we propose a power traces decomposition method that divides the original power traces into two parts, where the data-influenced part is defined as data power traces (T
data
) and the other part is defined as device constant power traces, and use the T
data
for training the network model, which has more obvious advantages than using the original power traces for training the network model. To verify the effectiveness of the approach, we evaluated the ATXmega128D4 microcontroller by capturing the power traces generated when implementing AES-128. Experimental results show that network models trained using T
data
outperform network models trained using raw power traces (T
raw
) in terms of classification accuracy, training time, cross-subkey recovery key, and cross-device recovery key.