DPA Countermeasures — Theory vs. Practice

In today’s interconnected world, the information that we generate, store, transmit, and receive has become a valuable commodity. We have increasingly turned to cryptography as a tool to protect the confidentiality and integrity of this information, but we read almost daily about those protections being defeated. Skilled practitioners can often successfully mount attacks using only very modest resources to break unprotected devices. Attacks on FPGA bitstream encryption, as often reported in the open literature, represent significant examples of the DPA (Differential Power Analysis) threat for the aerospace and defense community.