Physical Side-Channel Attacks on Cryptographic Systems

We survey a number of attacks on cryptographic systems which depend on measuring physical characteristics of such systems whilst a given cryptographic operation is carried out. Such measurements could include the time needed to perform certain operations, the power consumed or any electromagnetic radiation produced. As such the physical measurement is producing a side-channel for the cryptographic system which leaks information about the internal secret key. We also describe a number of the countermeasures that have been proposed in the literature