Silicon-correlated Simulation Methodology of EM Side-channel Leakage Analysis

Abstract

Cryptography hardware is vulnerable to side-channel (SC) attacks on power supply current flow and electromagnetic (EM) emission. This article proposes simulation-based power and EM side-channel leakage analysis (SCLA) techniques on a cryptographic integrated circuit (IC) chip in system level assembly. SCLA measures SC leakage metrics including T-score, SC leakage score, and the number of measurement traces to disclosure, leveraged by a secure system-on-chip design flow toward SC attack resiliency and SC leakage sign off. Power SCLA features the tracking of security sensitive registers within cryptographic logic paths and the automatic assignments of probe points on associated physical power nets. Power supply current traces are efficiently simulated for the large set of input payloads, with direct vector-based and vector-less random switching controls. EM SCLA evaluates magnetic fields created by every piece of metal wiring in metal stacks where power supply current of cryptographic processing flows. The EM emission and EM SCLA from the backside Si surface of an IC chip in flip-chip packaging are experimentally examined with a 0.13 μm test chip. The proposed simulation-based SCLA exhibits the SC leakage metrics of on-chip location and direction dependency as accurately as in the measurements.