Side-Channel Analysis

Side-channel analysis is a family of attacks that exploit physical properties of cryptographic implementations (timing, power consumption, electromagnetic emissions, cache behavior) to recover secret keys. Introduced by Paul Kocher in 1996, side-channel attacks have repeatedly broken implementations of theoretically secure cryptosystems by leveraging unintended information leakage. Side-channel analysis has become a critical concern in cryptographic system design, requiring constant-time implementations and physical countermeasures.