Power Analysis

In cryptography, power analysis is a form of side channel attack in which the attacker studies the power consumption of a cryptographic hardware device (such as a smart card, tamper-resistant "black box", or integrated circuit). The attack can non-invasively extract cryptographic keys and other secret information from the device.

Simple power analysis (SPA) involves visually interpreting power traces, or graphs of electrical activity over time. Differential power analysis (DPA) is a more advanced form of power analysis which can allow an attacker to compute the intermediate values within cryptographic computations by statistically analyzing data collected from multiple cryptographic operations. SPA and DPA were introduced in the open cryptologic community in 1998 by Cryptography Research's Paul Kocher, Joshua Jaffe and Benjamin Jun.

Read more about Power Analysis:  Simple Power Analysis, Differential Power Analysis, High-order Differential Power Analysis, Power Analysis and Algorithmic Security, Standards and Practical Security Concerns, Preventing Simple and Differential Power Analysis Attacks, Patents

Famous quotes containing the words power and/or analysis:

    To be inspired is to be moved in an extraordinary manner by the power or Spirit of God to act, speak, or think what is holy, just and true; [Enthusiasm is] A Full, but false persuasion in a man that he is inspired.
    Henry More (1614–1687)

    The spider-mind acquires a faculty of memory, and, with it, a singular skill of analysis and synthesis, taking apart and putting together in different relations the meshes of its trap. Man had in the beginning no power of analysis or synthesis approaching that of the spider, or even of the honey-bee; but he had acute sensibility to the higher forces.
    Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)