Enhancing Side-Channel Attacks Through X-Ray-Induced Leakage Amplification

In this paper, we propose a novel approach that utilizes localized X-ray irradiation to amplify data-dependent leakage currents in CMOS-based cryptography circuits. Our proposed technique strategically targets specific regions in a circuit using X-rays, inducing variations in dynamic and static power consumption due to Total Ionizing Dose (TID) effects, which increases or even reveals hidden data leakage. In this work, we present several experimental campaigns highlighting the benefits of our approach to combinational and sequential logic. Our experiments show a significant increase in information leakage in the targeted regions, which improves the signal-to-noise ratio coefficient and thus makes recovering the processed bytes easier. We envision the possibility of using this technique on full cryptographic designs on both FPGA and ASICs.