ISC2 Certified Secure Software Lifecycle Professional (CSSLP) Practice Question
While designing a battery-powered medical implant, your team worries an attacker with physical access could recover the device's AES key by measuring its power usage during firmware updates. Which design decision most directly mitigates this simple power analysis threat?
Use constant-time cryptographic routines supplemented with data masking to make power consumption independent of secret values.
Switch from 128-bit to 256-bit AES keys to increase resistance against brute-force attacks.
Require mutual TLS for all communications between the implant and external programming devices.
Enable hardware write-protection on the flash region that stores the symmetric key material.
Simple or differential power analysis exploits correlations between instantaneous current draw and secret data processed by the algorithm. Implementing constant-time, data-independent code paths and masking intermediate values randomize or equalize power consumption, breaking that correlation and denying the attacker useful leakage. Merely lengthening the key, adding TLS for communications, or write-protecting flash address different attack vectors (brute-force cryptanalysis, in-transit interception, or static code tampering) and do little to reduce information leaked through side-channel power measurements.
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ISC2 Certified Secure Software Lifecycle Professional (CSSLP)
Secure Software Architecture and Design
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