A Systematic Appraisal of Side Channel ...

In this paper we examine the central question that is how well do side channel evaluation regimes capture the true security level of a product. Concretely, answering this question requires considering the optimality of the attack/evaluation strategy selected by the evaluator, and the various steps to instantiate it. We draw on a number of published works and discuss whether state-of-the-art solutions for the different steps of a side-channel security evaluation offer bounds or guarantees of optimality, or if they are inherently heuristic. We use this discussion to provide an informal rating of the steps’ optimality and to put forward where risks of overstated security levels remain.