The device does not contain sufficient protection mechanisms to prevent physical side channels from exposing sensitive information due to patterns in physically observable phenomena such as variations in power consumption, electromagnetic emissions (EME), or acoustic emissions.
An adversary could monitor and measure physical phenomena to detect patterns and make inferences, even if it is not possible to extract the information in the digital domain. Physical side channels have been well-studied for decades in the context of breaking implementations of cryptographic algorithms or other attacks against security features. These side channels may be easily observed by an adversary with physical access to the device, or using a tool that is in close proximity. If the adversary can monitor hardware operation and correlate its data processing with power, EME, and acoustic measurements, the adversary might be able to recover of secret keys and data.
Threat Mapped score: 3.0
Industry: Finiancial
Threat priority: P2 - Serious (High)
CVE: CVE-2022-35888
Power side-channels leak secret information from processor
CVE: CVE-2021-3011
electromagnetic-wave side-channel in security-related microcontrollers allows extraction of private key
CVE: CVE-2019-14353
Crypto hardware wallet's power consumption relates to total number of pixels illuminated, creating a side channel in the USB connection that allows attackers to determine secrets displayed such as PIN numbers and passwords
CVE: CVE-2020-27211
Chain: microcontroller system-on-chip contains uses a register value stored in flash to set product protection state on the memory bus but does not contain protection against fault injection (CWE-1319), which leads to an incorrect initialization of the memory bus (CWE-1419) leading the product to be in an unprotected state.
CVE: CVE-2013-4576
message encryption software uses certain instruction sequences that allows RSA key extraction using a chosen-ciphertext attack and acoustic cryptanalysis
CVE: CVE-2020-28368
virtualization product allows recovery of AES keys from the guest OS using a side channel attack against a power/energy monitoring interface.
CVE: CVE-2019-18673
power consumption varies based on number of pixels being illuminated in a display, allowing reading of secrets such as the PIN by using the USB interface to measure power consumption
N/A
| Phase | Note |
|---|---|
| Implementation | N/A |
Intro: Consider a device that checks a passcode to unlock the screen.
Body: PIN numbers used to unlock a cell phone should not exhibit any characteristics about themselves. This creates a side channel. An attacker could monitor the pulses using an oscilloscope or other method. Once the first character is correctly guessed (based on the oscilloscope readings), they can then move to the next character, which is much more efficient than the brute force method of guessing every possible sequence of characters.
As each character of
the PIN number is entered, a correct character
exhibits one current pulse shape while an
incorrect character exhibits a different current
pulse shape.Intro: Consider the device vulnerability CVE-2021-3011, which affects certain microcontrollers [REF-1221]. The Google Titan Security Key is used for two-factor authentication using cryptographic algorithms. The device uses an internal secret key for this purpose and exchanges information based on this key for the authentication. If this internal secret key and the encryption algorithm were known to an adversary, the key function could be duplicated, allowing the adversary to masquerade as the legitimate user.
The local method of extracting the secret key consists of plugging the key into a USB port and using electromagnetic (EM) sniffing tools and computers.Intro: The code snippet provided here is part of the modular exponentiation module found in the HACK@DAC'21 Openpiton System-on-Chip (SoC), specifically within the RSA peripheral [REF-1368]. Modular exponentiation, denoted as "a^b mod n," is a crucial operation in the RSA public/private key encryption. In RSA encryption, where 'c' represents ciphertext, 'm' stands for a message, and 'd' corresponds to the private key, the decryption process is carried out using this modular exponentiation as follows: m = c^d mod n, where 'n' is the result of multiplying two large prime numbers.
Body: The vulnerable code shows a buggy implementation of binary exponentiation where it updates the result register (result_reg) only when the corresponding exponent bit (exponent_reg[0]) is set to 1. However, when this exponent bit is 0, the output register is not updated. It's important to note that this implementation introduces a physical power side-channel vulnerability within the RSA core. This vulnerability could expose the private exponent to a determined physical attacker. Such exposure of the private exponent could lead to a complete compromise of the private key.
... module mod_exp ... `UPDATE: begin if (exponent_reg != 'd0) begin if (exponent_reg[0]) result_reg <= result_next; base_reg <= base_next; exponent_reg <= exponent_next; state <= `UPDATE; ... endmodule