Trace Copilot: Automatically Locating Cryptographic Operations in Side-Channel Traces by Firmware Binary Instrumenting

Abstract: A common assumption in side-channel analysis is that the attacker knows the cryptographic algorithm implementation of the victim. However, many labsetting studies implicitly extend this assumption to the knowledge of the source code, by inserting triggers to measure, locate or align the Cryptographic Operations (CO) in the trace. For real-world attacks, the source code is typically unavailable, which poses a challenge for locating the COs thus reducing the effectiveness of many methods. In contrast, obtaining the (partial) binary firmware is more prevalent in practical attacks on embedded devices. While binary code theoretically encapsulates necessary information for side-channel attacks on software-implemented cryptographic algorithms, there is no systematic study on leveraging this information to facilitate side-channel analysis. This paper introduces a novel and general framework that utilizes binary information for the automated locating of COs on side-channel traces. We first .... https://ojs.ub.rub.de/index.php/TCHES/article/view/11925

Object Details

• Location: Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Frankfurt am Main
• Extent: Online-Ressource
• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Trace Copilot: Automatically Locating Cryptographic Operations in Side-Channel Traces by Firmware Binary Instrumenting ; volume:2025 ; number:1 ; year:2024 ; IACR transactions on cryptographic hardware and embedded systems ; 2025, Heft 1 (2024)

Contributors, Places and Time

• Creator: Qu, Shipei ; Wang, Yuxuan ; Yu, Jintong ; Zhang, Chi ; Gu, Dawu

Further information

• DOI: 10.46586/tches.v2025.i1.128-159
• URN: urn:nbn:de:101:1-2412181755431.069494363305
• Rights: Open Access; Der Zugriff auf das Objekt ist unbeschränkt möglich.
• Last update: 15.08.2025, 7:25 AM CEST