#  Introduction

##  REASSURE objectives

Implementing cryptography on embedded devices is an ongoing challenge: every
year new implementation flaws are discovered and new attack paths are being
used by real life adversaries. Whilst cryptography can guarantee many security
properties, it crucially depends on the ability to keep the used keys secret
even in face of determined adversaries.

Over the last two decades a new type of adversary has emerged, able to obtain,
from the cryptographic implementation, side channel leakage such as recording
of response times, power or EM signals, etc. To account for such adversaries,
sophisticated security certification and evaluation methods (Common Criteria,
EMVCo, FIPS...) have been established to give users assurance that security
claims have withstood independent evaluation and testing. Recently the
reliability of these evaluations has come into the spotlight: the Taiwanese
citizen card proved to be insecure, and Snowden’s revelations about NSA’s
tampering with FIPS standards eroded public confidence. REASSURE will:

  1. improve the efficiency and quality of all aspects of certification using a novel, structured detectmapexploit approach that will also improve the comparability of independently conducted evaluations, 

  

  2. cater for emerging areas such as the IoT by automating leakage assessment practices in order to allow resistance assessment without immediate access to a testing lab, 

  

  3. deliver tools to stakeholders, such as reference data sets and an open-source leakage simulator based on instruction-level profiles for a processor relevant for the IoT, 

  

  4. improve existing standards by actively pushing the novel results to standardization bodies. 

  

  

REASSURE’s consortium is ideal to tackle such ambitious tasks. It features two
major circuits manufacturers (NXP, MORPHO), a highly respected side channel
testing lab (Riscure), an engaged governmental representative (ANSSI), and two
of the most prominent research institutions in this field (UCL, University of

Bristol).

##  Data sharing policy

Very early in the construction of the REASSURE project, it was decided that
not all leakage traces would be made available publicly (the consortium
explicitly opted out of the open access pilot plan). Indeed, parts of the
power traces manipulated by industrial partners correspond to evaluations of
their own, or their customer’s, product, and these data sets are critical from
a security point of view, and also from a customer’s confidence point of view.
Similarly, some elements, such as the exact identification of the product
being evaluated, might not always be fully described in order not to expose
company-specific products.

Yet, as discussed in Sec.2.2, it is the conviction of the consortium that
largely sharing experimental data is paramount to improve the comparability
and quality of evaluations. Consequently, whilst REASSURE will not commit to
sharing all experimental data, we will in practice provide as many practically
useful data sets as possible.

#  Data summary

##  Purpose of data collection/generation

Data generated in the framework of REASSURE mainly consists in data sets
related to side-channel analysis, i.e. leakage traces (e.g. power or
electromagnetic traces) acquired or simulated when performing side-channel
analysis of a given device. This data will then be processed in order to try
and expose the cryptographic keys manipulated by the device or, on the
contrary, to assess the efficiency of side-channel countermeasures by showing
that these keys cannot be recovered.

##  Purpose of data sharing

The efficiency of a side-channel attack depends on a large number of factors,
including the quality of the physical data (which in turn depends on the
measuring equipment, amount of noise, skills and knowledge of the person
performing the measurement), the knowledge of the implementation and device’s
behaviour, the quality of the exploitation strategy...As a consequence,
comparing different attack techniques is very difficult: when a paper
describing a new attack technique appears in the literature, it is not always
easy to decide whether it yields better results because of its intrinsic
quality, or due to more favorable initial data. For the same reason, comparing
the efficiency different countermeasures is quite hard to achieve.

By sharing leakage traces at various stages of their processing, REASSURE aims
to:

  * Allow reproducing experiments, either to validate claims or as a tool facilitating learning. 

  

  * Allow a fair comparison of specific substeps of attacks, by making it possible to compare the efficiency of different methods when exploiting _the same data_ . 

  

  * Provide a common reference basis: in the future, it is our hope to see new results documented by applying them on some openly-accessible reference leakage traces. 

  

  * Remove the burden of having to actually run the acquiring of physical leakage traces. This should prove useful for researchers working on side channel evaluation who have a mathematical/algorithmical background (with strong expertise in signal processing, information extraction or statistical evaluation), but little to no knowledge on physical measurements or access to laboratories allowing them to practically generate and collect traces. 

  

##  Target audience

REASSURE-related data are expected to be of use for:

  * academic researchers; 

  

  * device manufacturers; 

  

  * implementers of embedded cryptographic algorithms; 

  

  * evaluators assessing the side-channel resistance bodies; 

  

  * working groups and standardization bodies, such as the JHAS, ANSSI or BSI, to help them decide on the relevance of newly published attacks. 

  

##  Types and formats of data

Data include:

  1. Raw data acquired when performing physical measurements of a given chip using specific laboratory equipment. 

  

  2. Simulated data, generated by running a simulator emulating a chip’s behaviour based on a more or less sophisticated model. 

  

  3. Post-processed data, generated based on raw or simulated data by applying some post-treatment (e.g. point-of-interest identification, template modeling...). Post-treatment is an iterative process, so various levels of post-processed data may exist. 

  

  

Raw and simulated data typically consist in a set of one-dimensional (e.g.
power consumption) or multidimensional (e.g. electromagnetic emanations)
information collected per unity of time. Post-processed data may take a
similar form, or be the output of a statistical treatment – and, more
generally, of any mathematical function – applied to the initial data. Typical
examples are reduced data sets after points-of-interest identification or
dimensionality reduction, or a probability density function when a template
attack is performed.

##  Expected size of data

Depending on the sampling frequencies and measurement precision, the size of
leakage data can greatly vary, from a couple of megabytes to several
gigabytes.

#  Data sharing principles

Data generated by REASSURE must be shared according to the FAIR principle,
meaning that it should be findable, accessible, interoperable and re-usable.
We describe below the general principles that will be followed to enforce
this. These principles will be further refined as the project evolves.

##  Sharing policy

As our objective is to allow as widespread use of the data as possible, open
licensing schemes similar to the  Creative Commons,  are being considered.
Consortium members, especially academic partners, consider aligning themselves
with the University of Bristol “Open Access Software License”, which seems
well in line with REASSURE’s intents. The compliance of this with partner’s
institutional regulations is being investigated.

##  Data localization

The exact storage process to be used by REASSURE is still under evaluation.
Most likely will it be a mixture of partner’s institutional storage facilities
and, especially for very large data pieces, mass storage solutions, e.g.
cloud-based. Data replication will be considered to ensure both easy access
and disaster recovery.

##  Data referencing

Data will be made findable mostly through REASSURE’s dissemination activities.
Links towards data repositories will be provided on the project’s website, as
well as in all related scientific publication, position papers and
deliverables. In particular, scientific publications will clearly identify the
data used to obtain results and, whenever not prohibited by confidentiality
reasons, will provide direct access to these data.

##  (Meta-)Data format

Each data set will be accompanied by a clear description of

  * The device under evaluation. 

  

  * The equipment (hardware and/or software) used for data acquisition or generation. 

  

  * The treatment applied to the data. 

  

  * The identity of the involved team(s). 

  

  * The format of the data file. 

  

  * Any additional information deemed relevant. 

  

Considering the large number of possible configurations and variability of
potentially relevant parameters in the measurement setup, no standard naming
convention or metadata format will be used. Instead, the configuration will
consist in a text describing the device, equipment and measurement setup in a
clear and unambiguous way.

As described in the introduction, some elements, such as the exact
identification of the product being evaluated, might not always be fully
described in order not expose company-specific products. More generic
information, such as the bus size and operating frequency, will then be
provided.

##  Data lifetime

Nothing in the nature of the data – such as privacy-preserving reasons – makes
it necessary to destroy them after a given period of time, hence no action
will be taken to delete them nor limit their replication. The consortium’s
goal is to maintain data availability for at least three years after project
end.

Appendices

#  A University of Bristol – Open Access Software Licence

Copyright (c) 2016, The University of Bristol, a chartered corporation having
Royal Charter number RC000648 and a charity (number X1121) and its place of
administration being at Senate House, Tyndall Avenue, Bristol, BS8 1TH, United
Kingdom.

All rights reserved

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

  1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and thefollowing disclaimer. 

  

  2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions andthe following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. THIS 

  

  

SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY
EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DIS-

CLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR
ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES
(INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES;

LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON
ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT
(INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS
SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

Any use of the software for scientific publications or commercial purposes
should be reported to the University of Bristol (OSI-
notifications@bristol.ac.uk and quote reference REASSURE, H2020 project
731591). This is for impact and usage monitoring purposes only.

Enquiries about further applications and development opportunities are
welcome. Please contact elisabeth.

oswald@bristol.ac.uk

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