ABSTRACT
As we have seen in the previous chapters, implementation of cryptographic algorithms is complex. These ciphers are complex mathematical constructs, often requiring large-field arithmetic, multiple iterations etc. Hence various techniques are required to make the designs efficient. The ciphers are designed carefully with chosen parameters to thwart the cryptanalysts. Depending on the underlying platform, several hardware and software designs of the same ciphers are developed, to ensure that security comes at a minimal cost to the user. Though conventional attacks are independent of these implementations, most often the standard ciphers, like AES and ECC are designed in a fashion that the attacks are more often not practical. However there is a form of cryptanalysis, known as side channel analysis (SCA) which exploits not only the mathematical structures of the ciphers, but
also the inherent properties of the implementations. These menacing category of attacks jeopardizes some of the basic assumptions on which the conventional cryptographer designs ciphers, and thus requires special consideration in the context of hardware and embedded security.
