Analysis of Data Dependence of Leakage Current in CMOS Cryptographic Hardware

A novel power analysis technique for CMOS cryptographic hardware based on leakage power consumption measurements is presented. Algorithms and models to predict the input vector for maximum and minimum leakage currentallin CMOS gates are reviewed. Extensive transistor level simulations on a simple CMOS crypto core are presented. Leakage current measurements carried out on an ASIC for cryptographic applications implemented in a 0.13 um CMOS technology are reported. The results of this work show that leakage current can be exploited as a side channel by an attacker to extract information about the secret key in cryptographic hardware implemented in short channel CMOS technologies.