Case Study: Horizontal Side-Channel Analysis Attack against Elliptic Curve Scalar Multiplication Accelerator under Laser Illumination

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Petryk, Dmytro, Kabin, Ievgen, Langendoerfer, Peter, Dyka, Zoya
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2026
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author Petryk, Dmytro
Kabin, Ievgen
Langendoerfer, Peter
Dyka, Zoya
author_facet Petryk, Dmytro
Kabin, Ievgen
Langendoerfer, Peter
Dyka, Zoya
contents Devices employing cryptographic approaches have to be resistant to physical attacks. Side-Channel Analysis (SCA) and Fault Injection (FI) attacks are frequently used to reveal cryptographic keys. In this paper, we present a combined SCA and laser illumination attack against an Elliptic Curve Scalar Multiplication accelerator using a differential probe from Teledyne LeCroy. Our experiments show that laser illumination increases the power consumption of the chip, especially its static power consumption but the success of the horizontal power analysis attacks was changed insignificantly. We assume that using a laser with a high laser beam power and concentrating on measuring and analysing only static current can improve the attack success significantly. The horizontal attacks against public key cryptosystems exploiting the Static Consumption under Laser Illumination (SCuLI attacks) are novel and their potential is not investigated yet. These attacks can be especially dangerous against cryptographic chips manufactured in scaled technologies. If such attacks are feasible, appropriate countermeasures have to be proposed in the future.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_19811
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Case Study: Horizontal Side-Channel Analysis Attack against Elliptic Curve Scalar Multiplication Accelerator under Laser Illumination
Petryk, Dmytro
Kabin, Ievgen
Langendoerfer, Peter
Dyka, Zoya
Cryptography and Security
Hardware Architecture
Devices employing cryptographic approaches have to be resistant to physical attacks. Side-Channel Analysis (SCA) and Fault Injection (FI) attacks are frequently used to reveal cryptographic keys. In this paper, we present a combined SCA and laser illumination attack against an Elliptic Curve Scalar Multiplication accelerator using a differential probe from Teledyne LeCroy. Our experiments show that laser illumination increases the power consumption of the chip, especially its static power consumption but the success of the horizontal power analysis attacks was changed insignificantly. We assume that using a laser with a high laser beam power and concentrating on measuring and analysing only static current can improve the attack success significantly. The horizontal attacks against public key cryptosystems exploiting the Static Consumption under Laser Illumination (SCuLI attacks) are novel and their potential is not investigated yet. These attacks can be especially dangerous against cryptographic chips manufactured in scaled technologies. If such attacks are feasible, appropriate countermeasures have to be proposed in the future.
title Case Study: Horizontal Side-Channel Analysis Attack against Elliptic Curve Scalar Multiplication Accelerator under Laser Illumination
topic Cryptography and Security
Hardware Architecture
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.19811