A HYBRID MITIGATION STRATEGY FOR SIDE-CHANNEL ATTACKS ON ARM CORTEX-M MICROCONTROLLERS

Abstract

This research proposes the development and validation of a software-based hybrid mitigation strategy for side-channel attacks on ARM Cortex-M microcontrollers, using the NUCLEO-H753ZI board. Side-channel attacks exploit non-functional physical information such as power consumption, execution time, and electromagnetic emissions to extract sensitive data, including cryptographic keys. The study is motivated by the increasing adoption of low-cost embedded systems in critical applications (e.g., medical devices, home automation, and industrial systems); these systems face processing, memory, and power constraints that hinder the implementation of advanced security mechanisms. Although software and hardware countermeasures exist to reduce the effectiveness of these attacks, many require resources incompatible with lower-capacity devices. The proposed methodology will leverage integrated features of the NUCLEO-H753ZI platform such as the random number generator (RNG) and hardware cryptographic accelerators combined with techniques including noise insertion, temporal jitter, execution shuffling, and dummy operations. These countermeasures will be applied to AES and RSA algorithm implementations to enhance their resistance against SPA and DPA attacks. Validation will be conducted through power consumption measurements using laboratory instruments, comparing scenarios with and without the mitigation techniques. The study aims to demonstrate that the hybrid strategy reduces the exposure of signals exploitable by side-channel attacks without significantly compromising performance or energy consumption, thereby contributing to improved security in low-cost embedded systems.