Barco Silex will use differential power analysis (DPA) from Rambus’ cryptography research division (CRD), for a variety of point-of-sale applications, including banking, retailing, mass transit, and wireless telecommunications.
DPA is a type of side-channel attack that involves monitoring variations in the electrical power consumption or EM emissions from a target device. These measurements can then be used to derive cryptographic keys and other sensitive information from chips.
“Side-channel attacks are becoming more prevalent, and we need a sound solution to combat this growing risk to ensure customer confidence and protect high-value assets,” said Sébastien Rabou, product manager at Barco Silex, in a statement. “The partnership with Rambus allows us to have access to the world-class cryptography engineers while developing solutions to benefit the point-of-sale market.”
Concerns about DPA security attacks originated in the smartcard market; however, the potential for these attacks is spreading into many other markets. For this reason, there is a need for DPA countermeasures to be adopted across all markets where valuable financial and personal data is being handled. Today, products commonly at risk include point-of-sale devices, mobile phones, secure USB flash drives, pay television set-top boxes, and optical disc players among others.
“The risk of security breaches continues to explode and customers need to quickly get secure solutions into the market,” said Simon Blake-Wilson, vice president of products and marketing of the Rambus Cryptography Research division. “By partnering with Barco Silex, we have created another channel that will accelerate time-to-market with advanced security technology.”
CRD’s portfolio of application-specific hardware core and software library solutions can be used by chipmakers to build DPA resistant products. These include leak reduction, incorporating randomness, generating amplitude and temporal noise, as well as executing protocol-level countermeasures.