Title
On the optimality and practicability of mutual information analysis in some scenarios
Abstract
The best possible side-channel attack maximizes the success rate and would correspond to a maximum likelihood (ML) distinguisher if the leakage probabilities were totally known or accurately estimated in a profiling phase. When profiling is unavailable, however, it is not clear whether Mutual Information Analysis (MIA), Correlation Power Analysis (CPA), or Linear Regression Analysis (LRA) would be the most successful in a given scenario. In this paper, we show that MIA coincides with the maximum likelihood expression when leakage probabilities are replaced by online estimated probabilities. Moreover, we show that the calculation of MIA is lighter that the computation of the maximum likelihood. We then exhibit two case-studies where MIA outperforms CPA. One case is when the leakage model is known but the noise is not Gaussian. The second case is when the leakage model is partially unknown and the noise is Gaussian. In the latter scenario MIA is more efficient than LRA of any order.
Year
DOI
Venue
2018
https://doi.org/10.1007/s12095-017-0241-x
Cryptography and Communications
Keywords
Field
DocType
Side-channel analysis,Unprofiled distinguishers,MIA,CPA,LRA,Maximum likelihood,Complexity,62B10
Correlation power analysis,Leakage (electronics),Profiling (computer programming),Maximum likelihood,Gaussian,Mutual information,Statistics,Mathematics,Computation,Linear regression
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
10
1
1936-2447
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
0
0.34
14
Authors
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Éloi de Chérisey100.34
Sylvain Guilley2279.46
Annelie Heuser312017.55
Olivier Rioul49223.54