CS Talk - Daniel Genkin
Title: I Know What You Did Last Decryption: Physical Side Channel Attacks on PCs
Host: Mariana Raykova
This is a talk covering a very interesting and exciting line of work on using physical attacks to extract crypto keys. It will cover also the acoustic attack, which received a lot of attention (http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/173108-researchers-crack-the-worlds-toughest-encryption-by listening-to-the-tiny-sounds-made-by-your-computers-cpu). The talk has many realtime demos, which are impressive to see. It is at level accessible to general CS audience.
Abstract:
Can secret information be extracted from personal computers by measuring their physical properties from the outside? What would it take to extract whole keys from such fast and complex devices? We present myriads way to do so including:
* Acoustic key extraction using microphones to record the high-pitched noise caused by vibration of electronic circuit components during decryption.
* Electric key extraction exploiting fluctuations in the “ground” electric potential of computers. An attacker can measure this signal by touching the computer’s chassis or the shield on the remote end of Ethernet, VGA or USB cables.
* Electromagnetic key extraction using a cheap radio to non-intrusively attack laptop computers.
The talk will discuss the cryptanalytic physical and signal-processing principles of the attacks and include live demonstrations.
The talk is based on joint works with Lev Pachmanov, Itamar Pipman, Adi Shamir and Eran Tromer.