Demos Andreou, a lead engineer at power management company Eaton, has conducted an analysis of protection devices typically used in the energy sector, specifically in power distribution stations.
Side-channel attacks can be used to extract data from a system based on information gained by observing its physical implementation. There are several side-channel attack methods, but Andreou’s research looked at timing and power analysis attacks. These rely on the analysis of the time it takes to execute various computations, and the measurable changes in power consumption as the targeted device performs cryptographic operations, respectively.
The researcher says both timing and power analysis attacks can be launched against ICS devices. However, since timing attacks are easier to detect and block, he focused his research on power analysis.
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