Developing an Electromagnetic Noise Generator to Protect a Raspberry PI from Side Channel Analysis

Abstract

This research investigates the Electromagnetic (EM) side channel leakage of a Raspberry Pi 2 B+. An evaluation is performed on the EM leakage as the device executes the AES-128 cryptographic algorithm contained in the libcrypto++ library in a threaded environment. Four multi-threaded implementations are evaluated. These implementations are Portable Operating System Interface Threads, C++11 threads, Threading Building Blocks, and OpenMP threads. It is demonstrated that the various thread techniques have distinct variations in frequency and shape as EM emanations are leaked from the Raspberry Pi. It is demonstrated that the AES-128 cryptographic implementation within the libcrypto++ library on a Raspberry Pi is vulnerable to Side Channel Analysis (SCA) attacks. The cryptographic process was seen visibly within the EM spectrum and the data for this process was extracted where digital filtering techniques was applied to the signal. The resultant data was utilised in the Differential Electromagnetic Analysis (DEMA) attack and the results revealed 16 sub-keys that are required to recover the full AES-128 secret key. Based on this discovery, this research introduced a multi-threading approach with the utilisation of Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA) to serve as a software based countermeasure to mitigate SCA attacks. The proposed countermeasure known as the FRIES noise generator executed as a Daemon and generated EM noise that was able to hide the cryptographic implementations and prevent the DEMA attack and other statistical analysis.

ULTRA: Ultimate Rootkit Detection over the Air

“…al. [24] proposed a countermeasure to a SDR side-channel attack on the Raspberry Pi by generating EM noise that consists of executing arithmetic instructions in an infinite loop. Noise-SDR [14] presents a novel technique by exploiting DRAM accesses to shape arbitrary signals out of EM noise from unprivileged software.…”

The choice of the way to counteract leakage of information due to side electromagnetic radiation

“…Актуальность такого способа защиты подтверждена интересом иностранных специалистов не только к средствам вычислительной техники, используемым для работы с документами ограниченного доступа, но и к устройствам, обеспечивающим работу различного оборудования через сети общего пользования. К данному классу оборудования можно отнести изделия «Интернет вещей» (IoT), построенных с использованием микроконтроллеров, например, Raspberry Pi, и обладающих каналом утечки информации за счёт побочных электромагнитных излучений становятся [1].…”

“…Групповое использование генераторов шума подразумевает пространственно разнесённое (распределённое) размещение средств активной защиты информации относительно средств вычислительной техники. При групповом методе имеется возможность учитывать шум не только от одного генератора, но и от каждого, формирующего электромагнитное поле вблизи средств вычислительной техники, что создает возможность более рационального использования средств защиты информации с учетом не только соблюдения критерия защищённости информации от утечки за счёт побочных электромагнитных излучений, но и выполнения требований Государственной комиссии по радиочастотам и санитарных правил и норм (СанПиН) 1 .…”

Protecting Data at Risk of Unintentional Electromagnetic Emanation: TEMPEST Profiling

“…Spatial EM noise generators aim to prevent informative signal interception for subsequent analysis and retrieval of original information [96]. A study described in [97] demonstrates the use of an EM noise generator as a technique for obfuscating side-channel attack analysis that complicates the sensitive data extraction from EM emanations. The software defense mechanism is explored through a case study involving the Raspberry Pi.…”