Hyperparameter tuning represents one of the main challenges in deep learning-based profiling side-channel analysis. For each different side-channel dataset, the typical procedure to find a profiling model is applying hyperparameter tuning from scratch. The main reason is that side-channel measurements from various targets contain different underlying leakage distributions. Consequently, the same profiling model hyperparameters are usually not equally efficient for other targets. This paper considers autoencoders for dimensionality reduction to verify if encoded datasets from different targets enable the portability of profiling models and architectures. Successful portability reduces the hyperparameter tuning efforts as profiling model tuning is eliminated for the new dataset, and tuning autoencoders is simpler. We first search for the best autoencoder for each dataset and the best profiling model when the encoded dataset becomes the training set. Our results show no significant difference in tuning efforts using original and encoded traces, meaning that encoded data reliably represents the original data. Next, we verify how portable is the best profiling model among different datasets. Our results show that tuning autoencoders enables and improves portability while reducing the effort in hyperparameter search for profiling models. Lastly, we present a transfer learning case where dimensionality reduction might be necessary if the model is tuned for a dataset with fewer features than the new dataset. In this case, tuning of the profiling model is eliminated and training time reduced.

Evolutionary algorithms have been successfully applied to attack Physically Unclonable Functions (PUFs). CMA-ES is recognized as the most powerful option for a type of attack called the reliability attack. In this paper, we take a step back and systematically evaluate several metaheuristics for the challenge-response pair-based attack on strong PUFs. Our results confirm that CMA-ES has the best performance, but we note several other algorithms with similar performance while having smaller computational costs.

In fault injection attacks, the first step is to evaluate the target behavior for various fault injection parameters. Showing the results of such a characterization (commonly known as target cartography) is informative and allows researchers to assess the target’s behavior better. Additionally, it helps understand the performance of new search methods or attacks. Thus, publishing obtained results is essential to provide relevant information for reproducibility and benchmarking, improving state-of-the-art results and general security. Unfortunately, publishing the results also allows malicious parties to reverse engineer the information and potentially mount an attack easier. This work discusses how various transformations can be used to occlude sensitive information but, at the same time, still be useful for interested researchers. Our results show that even simple 2D transformations, such as rotation, scaling, and shifting, significantly increase the effort required to reverse engineer the transformed data but maintain the interesting data distribution. Consequently, this work provides a method to allow publishers to share more data in a confidential setting.

The usage of deep learning in profiled side-channel analysis requires a careful selection of neural network hyperparameters. In recent publications, different network architectures have been presented as efficient profiled methods against protected AES implementations. Indeed, completely different convolutional neural network models have presented similar performance against public side-channel traces databases. In this work, we analyze how weight initializers’ choice influences deep neural networks’ performance in the profiled side-channel analysis. Our results show that different weight initializers provide radically different behavior. We observe that even high-performing initializers can reach significantly different performance when conducting multiple training phases. Finally, we found that this hyperparameter is more dependent on the choice of dataset than other, commonly examined, hyperparameters. When evaluating the connections with other hyperparameters, the biggest connection is observed with activation functions.