Hacking at Home for $0-$250

As we are all thrilled to say goodbye to 2020 and ring in the new year, we know that much of the world is still going through waves of lockdowns. Since many of you are isolating at home, we wanted to provide a guide for getting started with the open-source ChipWhisperer platform without needing a full lab setup or expensive equipment.

Follow these selected step-by-step tutorials to learn more about how to conduct side-channel power analysis, and voltage and clock glitching. Many tutorials can be completed for free without any additional hardware.

Whether you’re a novice or a pro when it comes to embedded security and side-channel attacks, here is a list of tutorials, tips, and tools for every budget (starting at a whopping $0!) that can kick off your hacking-at-home adventures.

Visit our forum for technical support and to share what you're working on (we are adding a "Show & Tell" category). You can also visit our Help Center for additional support resources.

Self-guided hacking using the open-source ChipWhisperer platform for every budget end level of expertise.

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Level 1 - Free Tutorials, No Hardware Required ($0)

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SCA101 with sample traces (no hardware required) - Introductory

• An introduction to side-channel power analysis attacks. These attacks involve measuring the power consumption of a device while it’s performing sensitive operations. This can be used to attack password checks and even recover full encryption keys. Goes from the basics to attacking real AES-128 implementations.

• Follows https://learn.chipwhisperer.io/courses/power-analysis-101.

• Solution

SCA201 with sample traces (no hardware required) - Advanced

• Extends what was shown in SCA101. Explore techniques to resynchronize traces, attack different AES-128 implementations, and break an AES-256 bootloader. Online course in development.

• Solution

Fault201 traceless (1_XA) labs - Advanced

• Lab 201 1_1A: Fault Attacks and Cryptography

• Lab 201 1_3A: DFA Attack Against Last MixColumns

Introduction to Side-Channel Power Analysis (free course)

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Level 2 - Free Tutorials with ChipWhisperer Nano ($50)

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The ChipWhisperer-Nano is a low-cost tool for side-channel power analysis training. It allows performing attacks against algorithms such as AES using side-channel power analysis. It includes a Cortex-M0 based target device which can be programmed with various algorithms. Many of the educational examples from the ChipWhisperer-Lite will also work on the ChipWhisperer-Nano.

The ChipWhisperer-Nano has more limited triggering capability compared to the ChipWhisperer-Lite or ChipWhisperer-Pro, and as such is limited primarily to training environments. It includes basic voltage fault-injection capability (but cannot perform clock fault injection).

Features

• Integrated STM32F0 target for running cryptographic and security algorithms.

• Fixed gain front-end designed for working with integrated target.

• 8-bit ADC up to 20 MS/s, which can be driven from internal or external clock sources.

• Low-cost design suitable for use in large class-room environments.

• Programmer for STM32F0 integrated onto board.

• Uses same Jupyter-based environment as ChipWhisperer-Lite and ChipWhisperer-Pro.

Tutorials

SCA101 - Introductory

Fault101 Nano voltage glitch labs - Introductory

• An introduction to voltage and clock glitching attacks. By disrupting a device’s power or clock, we can cause unintended behaviour, such as corrupting variables or even skipping password checks. Online course in development.