From: Jeff Walther <trag at io.com>
Do
espionage types really try to sense what a processor is doing
remotely, based on the EM emissions from the chip?
Yes. For example:
https://www.iaik.tugraz.at/research/sca-lab/publications/pdf/Mangard2003Expl
oitingRadiatedEmissions.pdf
Abstract
The conducted and radiated emissions of integrated circuits
can not only cause interferences between electronic
devices, but they also pose a security problem. The emissions
of an IC executing a cryptographic algorithm contain
information about the secret key used in the IC.
This article gives a short introduction on how the
key-dependent emissions of a cryptographic IC can be
exploited. Based on two case studies, we show that
the secret key used in an IC can be revealed based on
measuring radiated emissions in the near and in the far
field. Additionally, we discuss how the measurement setups
used for the case studies can be improved to execute more
advanced attacks.