General scheme of differential power analysis

Power analysis observes the power consumption of cryptographic device depending on its activity and following attack uses the measured power traces to determine some sensitive information to abuse the device. Differential power analysis attacks are the most popular because the attacker does not need detailed knowledge about the attacked device but on the other hand, these attacks use mathematical approach and power consumption models. Understanding and the subsequent realization of the whole attack is not an easy task by no means. Therefore, this article describes the general schema on which all analyses are based on and best known statistical test including the basic power simulation models. We realized the best known power analysis based on correlation coefficient with a detailed description of the individual steps and we adjusted the general schema for this concrete example for better understanding of the attack. After reading the article, the reader is well familiarized about any context of the complex problems of differential power analysis.