As a guest lecturer for the CYBERUS master program, I created four two-hour lectures on fundamental topics of physical attacks. The figure below is a short overview of the contents.

overview

Lecture one is a general introduction to physical attacks, where we discuss why side-channel and fault attacks can be so devastating, the threat model, and we conclude with a deep dive into the certification world. In lecture two, we discuss simple and differential power analyses, briefly touching on countermeasures. Lecture three is dedicated to DPA success metrics and leakage assessment. We conclude with lecture four, which is dedicated to fault injection, specifically choosing the target of the attacks, tools, and target characterization. At the end, we discuss the excellent presentation of Joe Grand’s hacking of the Trezor hardware wallet.