Document Type

Thesis

College

College of Engineering

Department

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Degree

MSE in Electrical Engineering

Date Completed

5-2025

First Committee Member

Sah, Love K.

Second Committee Member

Magotra, Neeraj

Third Committee Member

Butakov, Sergey

Abstract

In an era of escalating cyber threats, hardware-level attacks have emerged as critical vectors for breaching cryptographic security. This thesis investigates two major classes of hardware-based attacks: firmware retrieval, key recovery and side-channel analysis. The first phase demonstrates practical firmware extraction from an embedded device using tools like CH341a, Binwalk, and Ghidra to reveal cryptographic vulnerabilities and recover encryption keys. The second phase explores power analysis attacks, specifically Differential Power Analysis (DPA), using the ChipWhisperer platform on STM32 and XMEGA microcontrollers to successfully extract AES encryption keys without physical tampering. These experiments underscore the limitations of relying solely on software-based defenses and highlight the ease with which attackers can exploit hardware-level information leakage. The findings advocate for stronger hardware security mechanisms, including secure boot, key masking, and power balancing. Ultimately, this work contributes to the understanding of hardware-rooted cryptographic vulnerabilities and emphasizes the need for holistic, silicon-level security approaches in modern computing systems.

Download

Share

COinS