In modern times, as data becomes more secure through encryption, there are certain attacks that you might not be aware of. One specific type of attack is called a side-channel attack.
Side Channel Attack
Secondary channel attacks rely on measuring trends and frequencies in your computer to establish patterns that can extract private information from your machine.
Side-channel or SCA attacks monitor your power consumption and electromagnetic emissions during crypto operations. Due to the low cost and simplicity of these attacks, several side-channel techniques can be used.
Here is a list of the different techniques:
Cache attack
Cache attack Monitor your cache access on a shared physical system. Commonly found in a virtualized environment or some type of cloud service.
Timed attack
Synchronization attack monitor computation time and construction models.
Power monitoring attack
Power Monitoring Attack Monitor the power consumption of the hardware during the compute.
Electromagnetic attack
The electromagnetic attack is Based on leakage of electromagnetic radiation, which can directly provide clear text and other information.
Such measurements can be used to derive cryptographic keys using techniques equivalent to those of power analysis or can be used in non-cryptographic attacks.
Acoustic cryptanalysis
Acoustic cryptanalysis Exploits the sound produced during a calculation much like a power analysis.
Differential fault analysis
The secrets of differential defect analysis are discovered by introducing defects into a calculation.
Data persistence
Data retention Sensitive data is read after it has allegedly been deleted.
Software fault attacks
Software-Based Default Attacks Currently a rare class of secondary channels, row hammer is an example where out-of-range memory can be corrupted by accessing adjacent memory too often, causing loss of state retention.
Optical
Optical secrets and sensitive data can be read by visual recording using a high-resolution camera or other devices with such capabilities.
How To Prevent Side Channel Attack ?
Different ways to help prevent these attacks have been introduced but have not been widely implemented. Here are some ways to try to prevent these attacks:
- Eliminate the disclosure of private information or ensure that this information is not linked to your private data.
- Power line conditioning and filtering to deter power monitoring attacks as well as to emit a channel with noise.
- The blinding technique which serves to modify the entry of the algorithm into an unpredictable state making all or part of the information leakage useful.
Once your keys are established, hackers could gain access to your data and increase your chances of corruption or deletion. Side-channel and other types of cyber-attacks are one of the main reasons why you should always have redundant backups running using a service like Jungle Disk and some other form of back-ups such as an external hard drive or network-attached storage device.
