Multi-Screaming-Channel Attacks: Frequency Diversity for Enhanced Attacks

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Guillaume, Jeremy, Pelcat, Maxime, Nafkha, Amor, Salvador, Rubén
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Guillaume, Jeremy
Pelcat, Maxime
Nafkha, Amor
Salvador, Rubén
author_facet Guillaume, Jeremy
Pelcat, Maxime
Nafkha, Amor
Salvador, Rubén
contents Side-channel attacks consist of retrieving internal data from a victim system by analyzing its leakage, which usually requires proximity to the victim in the range of a few millimetres. Screaming channels are EM side channels transmitted at a distance of a few meters. They appear on mixed-signal devices integrating an RF module on the same silicon die as the digital part. Consequently, the side channels are modulated by legitimate RF signal carriers and appear at the harmonics of the digital clock frequency. While initial works have only considered collecting leakage at these harmonics, late work has demonstrated that the leakage is also present at frequencies other than these harmonics. This result significantly increases the number of available frequencies to perform a screaming-channel attack, which can be convenient in an environment where multiple harmonics are polluted. This work studies how this diversity of frequencies carrying leakage can be used to improve attack performance. We first study how to combine multiple frequencies. Second, we demonstrate that frequency combination can improve attack performance and evaluate this improvement according to the performance of the combined frequencies. Finally, we demonstrate the interest of frequency combination in attacks at 15 and, for the first time to the best of our knowledge, at 30 meters. One last important observation is that this frequency combination divides by 2 the number of traces needed to reach a given attack performance.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2504_02979
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Multi-Screaming-Channel Attacks: Frequency Diversity for Enhanced Attacks
Guillaume, Jeremy
Pelcat, Maxime
Nafkha, Amor
Salvador, Rubén
Cryptography and Security
Side-channel attacks consist of retrieving internal data from a victim system by analyzing its leakage, which usually requires proximity to the victim in the range of a few millimetres. Screaming channels are EM side channels transmitted at a distance of a few meters. They appear on mixed-signal devices integrating an RF module on the same silicon die as the digital part. Consequently, the side channels are modulated by legitimate RF signal carriers and appear at the harmonics of the digital clock frequency. While initial works have only considered collecting leakage at these harmonics, late work has demonstrated that the leakage is also present at frequencies other than these harmonics. This result significantly increases the number of available frequencies to perform a screaming-channel attack, which can be convenient in an environment where multiple harmonics are polluted. This work studies how this diversity of frequencies carrying leakage can be used to improve attack performance. We first study how to combine multiple frequencies. Second, we demonstrate that frequency combination can improve attack performance and evaluate this improvement according to the performance of the combined frequencies. Finally, we demonstrate the interest of frequency combination in attacks at 15 and, for the first time to the best of our knowledge, at 30 meters. One last important observation is that this frequency combination divides by 2 the number of traces needed to reach a given attack performance.
title Multi-Screaming-Channel Attacks: Frequency Diversity for Enhanced Attacks
topic Cryptography and Security
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.02979