First-Order and Higher-Order Power Analysis: Computational Approaches and Aspects

Side-channel analysis pose a serious threat to many modern cryptosystems. Using Correlation power analysis, attacker may be able to recover the cipher key and therefore jeopardize the whole cryptosystem, which is why many countermeasures are being developed. These countermeasures are typically effective against first-order attacks. However, protected implementations may still be vulnerable to higher-order analysis. In this paper, we compare different approaches to the higher-order analysis regarding their mathematical and performance properties. We focus on Correlation power analysis attack and the test vector leakage assesment using Welch's t-test, we optimize and accelerate discussed algorithms using CPU and GPU, and we present our experimental results and remarks.