Power Analysis Attack of Block Cipher AES Based on Convolutional Neural Network

In order to provide confidential services between two communicating parties, block data encryption using a symmetric secret key is applied. A power analysis attack on a cryptosystem is a side channel-analysis method that can extract a secret key by measuring the power consumption traces of the crypto device. In this paper, we propose an attack model that can recover the secret key using a power analysis attack based on a deep learning convolutional neural network (CNN) algorithm. Considering that the CNN algorithm is suitable for image analysis, we particularly adopt the recurrence plot (RP) signal processing method, which transforms the one-dimensional power trace into two-dimensional data. As a result of executing the proposed CNN attack model on an XMEGA128 experimental board that implemented the AES-128 encryption algorithm, we recovered the secret key with 22.23% accuracy using raw power consumption traces, and obtained 97.93% accuracy using power traces on which we applied the RP processing method.