EM-X-DL: Efficient Cross-device Deep Learning Side-channel Attack With Noisy EM Signatures

Abstract

This work presents a Cross-device Deep-Learning based Electromagnetic (EM-X-DL) side-channel analysis (SCA) on AES-128, in the presence of a significantly lower signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) compared to previous works. Using a novel algorithm to intelligently select multiple training devices and proper choice of hyperparameters, the proposed 256-class deep neural network (DNN) can be trained efficiently utilizing pre-processing techniques like PCA, LDA, and FFT on measurements from the target encryption engine running on an 8-bit Atmel microcontroller. In this way, EM-X-DL achieves >90% single-trace attack accuracy. Finally, an efficient end-to-end SCA leakage detection and attack framework using EM-X-DL demonstrates high confidence of an attacker with <20 averaged EM traces.