Side-Channel Attacks on IoT: Risks and Mitigation in Embedded Systems

As the Internet of Things (IoT) expands into varying industries, it becomes essential to secure its node devices and prevent adversarial attacks from compromising the security of the network. Complex cryptographic operations make these devices increasingly vulnerable. Side Channel Attacks (SCA) are a form of attack that exploits unintended signal leakages, such as power or electromagnetic (EM) leakage, and performs correlational or differential analysis to extract sensitive information. These attacks have been effective in enabling adversaries to discover cryptographic information such as asymmetric secret keys and confidential data. Therefore, mitigation strategies have been explored to counter varying SCA methods. This paper provides a comprehensive review of power and EM SCA techniques that target IoT platforms, including an evaluation of the latest mitigation strategies and assessing their effectiveness for use in real-world embedded systems. Additionally, a case study on the challenges of SCA in Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is presented, demonstrating the feasibility of these attacks on resource constrained devices. This paper emphasizes the need for scalable countermeasures with minimal overhead against the evolving nature of SCA threats.