Hardware

Hardware security targets the physical implementation of a system rather than the abstract algorithm it runs. Even a mathematically sound cipher can leak its key through power consumption, timing or electromagnetic emanations, and a correct circuit can be forced into an invalid state with a well-placed fault.

This section groups three families of attacks:

• Side-Channel Analysis: recovering secrets from unintended physical leakage (power, timing, EM).
• Fault Injection: perturbing a computation (glitching, differential fault analysis) to bypass a check or break a cipher.
• Circuit Analysis: understanding and abusing the logic of a hardware circuit.