Side-channel attacks against a Bitcoin wallet

Nowadays, the cryptocoins and especially the Bitcoin have become very popular among the general public. This trend led to the commercialization of hardware wallets to store them. This master thesis aims to attack the open source hardware wallet developed and commercialized by Satochip thanks to side-channel attacks. The different potential attack points of the wallet will first be described. Then, a key derivation algorithm based on HMAC SHA-512 and used by the wallet will be chosen to be the subject of the attack developed in this work. A measurement setup relying on current consumption will be mounted and then, some metrics will be computed to evaluate the level of information available in the traces. Some limitations due to the card and to the communication protocol have prevented to perform a great alignment of the traces, and the result is a weak SNR and PI value. After that, a simulated SASCA will be performed against the HMAC SHA-512 for different noise levels. Finally, the results will show that the attack would be feasible with a sufficient level of information in the traces. Unfortunately, the success rate is low for the noise level observed in the real traces, so the attack will be unlikely to be successful in a real case with this card. However, since the metrics values are usually higher on this type of smart card, the security of another device against this attack could clearly be questioned.