Lumifer comments on Can noise have power? - Less Wrong

9 Post author: lukeprog 23 May 2014 04:54AM

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Comment author: Lumifer 27 May 2014 07:18:53PM 0 points [-]

If your adversary can read or write bits in your hardware, then what is the purpose of using cryptography?

Side channel attacks on hardware are not rare. For example, an adversary might have a way of measuring the power consumption of your CPU as it does RNG calculations. This is not quite the ability to "read or write bits in... hardware", but it is a viable attack to gain information about your, ahem, random numbers.

Comment author: V_V 28 May 2014 08:53:50AM 0 points [-]

Sure, but at this point they can also gain information on your keys or the data you wish to encrypt.

Comment author: Lumifer 28 May 2014 02:23:08PM 0 points [-]

Sure, but at this point they can also gain information on your keys or the data you wish to encrypt.

Not necessarily. Think wider, not only PCs use encrypted communications. Consider a router, for example, or a remote sensor.

Comment author: V_V 28 May 2014 10:43:34PM 0 points [-]

Still, if they can compromise the RNG state in the router/sensor/whatever, they could probably compromise its CPU and/or RAM.

Comment author: Lumifer 29 May 2014 04:13:29PM 0 points [-]

if they can compromise the RNG state in the router/sensor/whatever, they could probably compromise its CPU and/or RAM.

That's not self-evident to me. Passively observing power consumption is much easier than, say, getting inside a SOC in tamper-resistant packaging.

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