Electromagnetic side-channel analysis of AES-128 on Raspberry Pi 4 using a bare-metal implementation. Key recovery through trace alignment and statistical analysis.
This project demonstrates an electromagnetic (EM) side-channel attack on a bare-metal implementation of AES-128 encryption, conducted as part of an internship at DRDO’s SAG Lab. The aim was to show the feasibility of recovering secret encryption keys by analyzing EM radiation emitted from a Raspberry Pi 4 during cryptographic operations.
To implement AES-128 encryption in bare-metal C on Raspberry Pi 4, collect EM traces during encryption, and apply statistical side-channel analysis techniques (specifically Correlation Power Analysis, CPA) to extract the secret AES key.
| Component | Description |
|---|---|
| Target | Raspberry Pi 4 Model B |
| Probe | ELV Elektronik EM Probe Set |
| Oscilloscope | Rigol DS1054Z (for trace capture) |
| Dev Machine | PC running Ubuntu via VirtualBox with GCC-ARM toolchain |
| Other | MicroSD, USB keyboard, monitor, HDMI cable, power supply |
- Bare-metal C (No OS)
- GCC ARM Cross-Compiler
- Python / MATLAB for trace processing
- CSV format for storing EM traces
- UART communication (for plaintext/ciphertext transfer)