An Information-Theoretic Approach to Side-Channel Analysis
A special issue of Entropy (ISSN 1099-4300). This special issue belongs to the section "Information Theory, Probability and Statistics".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 June 2024 | Viewed by 2634
Special Issue Editors
Interests: information theory (IT); side-channel analysis (SCA); related countermeasures (masking)
Interests: trusted computing for embedded devices; cyber-physical security; prototyping cryptographic designs in ASIC and in FPGA; mathematics for side-channel and fault injection analyses; formal proofs
Interests: coding theory; algebraic combinatorics; number theory
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Processing sensitive data—personal information, PII, cryptographic keys and tokens, etc.—requires great caution because of potential information theft or manipulation. One classical adversarial method to achieve information extraction is to leverage side-channels. Side-channel analyses are as old as the classified "tempest" interception, aiming at spying at screens and keyboards. Then, timing attacks were put forth in 1996, followed by power analysis attacks in 1999. Such devastating attacks gave rise to several security certification schemes, such as Common Criteria and NIST FIPS 140 referentials. Recently, the Spectre and Meltdown side-channel attacks have renewed the interest in such analyses.
Side-channel attacks compromise systems’ security. They are mostly undetectable due to their stealthy behavior. Their risk is thus extremely high, and it is paramount to understand them well. This is all the more true as countermeasures can be designed. Such countermeasures cost resources and are expected to be efficient. However, an important issue is how to rate them, even assuming the worst case of the most powerful attacker. For all these reasons, formally capturing side-channel analyses is a necessary prerequisite.
Information theory seems to be the most suitable framework for this task, because it is general and it is capable of tolerating abstractions. It also encompasses several relevant security metrics, such as leakage measurement, attack success rate, and guessing entropy. In this Special Issue, we invite submissions of original works pursuing such effort.
List of topics:
We welcome contributions on the following topics.
- Theoretical frameworks for side-channel analysis;
- New mathematical descriptions of side-channels;
- Information-theoretic measures for information leakage;
- Tight bounds on the efficiency of attacks and countermeasures;
- Quantitative methods to detect or measure information leakage;
- Practical analysis results on use-cases;
- Novel paradigms for modeling side-channel analyses.
Dr. Wei Cheng
Prof. Dr. Sylvain Guilley
Prof. Dr. Patrick Solé
Prof. Dr. Olivier Rioul
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Entropy is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- information theory
- side-channel analysis
- attacks
- bounds
- countermeasures
