CPA Framework

Framework for side-channel attacks through power consumption using the Correlation Power Analysis (CPA) attack method. This implementation includes attacks on AES-128 and ASCON-128. As a baseline were used scripts developed by Leo Weissbart and Łukasz Michał Chmielewski, provided by the CESCA Lab.

How to set up:

Install Python 3.13.2

Download and unzip

cd /tmp
wget https://www.python.org/ftp/python/3.13.5/Python-3.13.5.tgz
tar -xvf Python-3.13.5.tgz
cd Python-3.13.5

Install required libraries and compile Python

sudo apt install -y build-essential libssl-dev libffi-dev libbz2-dev liblzma-dev libsqlite3-dev libreadline-dev libncurses5-dev zlib1g-dev tk-dev libgdbm-dev libdb5.3-dev libexpat1-dev
./configure --enable-optimizations
make -j$(nproc)
sudo make altinstall

Check if it is correctly installed

python3.13 --version

Setup venv and clone repo

cd ~
git clone https://github.com/Qas1modo/CPA-Framework
cd CPA-Framework
mkdir venv
python3.13 -m venv ./venv

Activate venv (temporary)

source ./venv/bin/activate

Install packages

python -m pip install --upgrade pip setuptools wheel
python -m pip install numpy
python -m pip install numba
python -m pip install trsfile
python -m pip install tqdm
python -m pip install pandas
python -m pip install scipy
python -m pip install matplotlib

Set up PYTHONPATH to project root

Temporary

export PYTHONPATH="~/CPA-Framework:$PYTHONPATH"

Permanent

echo 'export PYTHONPATH="~/CPA-Framework:$PYTHONPATH"' >> ~/.bashrc

Sometimes this does not work with '~', specify full path when it happens.

Install libraries for measurement script (Optional)

python -m pip install smartleia
git clone https://github.com/cw-leia/smartleia-target
cd smartleia-target
python3 -m pip install .
cd ..
rm -rf ./smartleia-target
python3 -m pip install picosdk
python3 -m pip install pycryptodome

How to use:

Configuration

All user configuration is located in the Configuration folder. Modify relevant files and their values to match your preferences.

• AES config to configure AES attack.
• Alignment config to configure directly started Alignment.
• ASCON config to configure ASCON attack.
• ASCON Trace Gen config to configure trace generator.
• Constants are used to store global constants, but they can be updated if necessary.
• Measurement Script Constants are used to store constants needed in measurement scripts, and can be updated if necessary.
• Measurement Script JavaCard config used to set up measurement script for JavaCard.
• Resampler config to configure directly started Resampler.
• TVLA config configures Test Vector Leakage Assessment(TVLA).

What you can run

• Alignment ⇒ Perform alignment based on your config.
• Resampler ⇒ Resample traces based on your preferences.
• Trace Converter ⇒ Convert or cut trace sets based on your preferences inside the file.
• Trace Printer ⇒ Print metadata and sample snippets from a trace set based on your preferences inside the file.
• Trace Visualizer ⇒ Interactively visualise traces based on your preferences inside the file.
• TVLA ⇒ Run TVLA on TraceSet specified in this config.
• AES Attack ⇒ Run AES attack based on your preferences from config.
• ASCON Attack ⇒ Run ASCON attack based on your preferences from config.
• ASCON Trace Gen ⇒ Run Trace Generator to create traces for leakage detection testing based on your preferences from config.
• Measurement Script JavaCard ⇒ Measurement script used to capture power traces from JavaCard by Picoscope, configured from here.

Use the framework

If you want to use the framework for a new SCA attack, you can use Generics by inheritance.

• Generic Attacker ⇒ Has the necessary functionality to perform SCA attack (automatic alignment, ...).
• Generic Extractor ⇒ Helps you with running the attack on multiple targets and prints results.
• Generic Logger ⇒ Helps you with logging the attack performance.
• Generic Parallel Writer ⇒ Has the functionality to parallelly write/read TRS, NPY and NPZ files.
• Generic Trace Loader ⇒ Implement reading of TRS, NPY and NPZ files with their metadata.
• Generic Trace Writer ⇒ Implement reading/writing of TRS, NPY and NPZ files with their metadata.
• Generic Trace Creator ⇒ Used to create traces in TRS, NPY and NPZ file formats without input files.