Leakage Detection with the x2-Test

Authors

  • Amir Moradi Horst Görtz Institute for IT Security, Ruhr-Universität Bochum
  • Bastian Richter Horst Görtz Institute for IT Security, Ruhr-Universität Bochum
  • Tobias Schneider ICTEAM/ELEN/Crypto Group, Université catholique de Louvain
  • François-Xavier Standaert ICTEAM/ELEN/Crypto Group, Université catholique de Louvain

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.13154/tches.v2018.i1.209-237

Keywords:

t-test, SCA evaluation, SCA distinguisher, statistical moments

Abstract

We describe how Pearson’s χ2-test can be used as a natural complement to Welch’s t-test for black box leakage detection. In particular, we show that by using these two tests in combination, we can mitigate some of the limitations due to the moment-based nature of existing detection techniques based on Welch’s t-test (e.g., for the evaluation of higher-order masked implementations with insufficient noise). We also show that Pearson’s χ2-test is naturally suited to analyze threshold implementations with information lying in multiple statistical moments, and can be easily extended to a distinguisher for key recovery attacks. As a result, we believe the proposed test and methodology are interesting complementary ingredients of the side-channel evaluation toolbox, for black box leakage detection and non-profiled attacks, and as a preliminary before more demanding advanced analyses.

Published

2018-02-14

Issue

Section

Articles

How to Cite

Leakage Detection with the x2-Test. (2018). IACR Transactions on Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems, 2018(1), 209-237. https://doi.org/10.13154/tches.v2018.i1.209-237