side channel attack (SCA)

In the case of the side channel attack, the attack on the secret data of a mobile device or a security module is not carried out directly, but via secondary information that arises during use.

Starting points for attacking secret data in security-related devices and components are the processing time required by the processor to process a digitalsignature, power consumption and electromagnetic radiation.

All these and other values are extracted and used to calculate algorithms that can crack the cryptosystem of a mobile device, smart cards, security modules or security tokens. To counter the threat of such attacks, when applying cryptographic techniques, it is important to consider not only the security at the level of algorithms, but also the way the cryptographic technique is implemented.

In vulnerability analysis, side-channel analysis is also used to satisfy Common Criterias( CC).