Remote Monitoring and Propagation Modeling of EM Side-Channel Signals for IoT Device Security

This paper presents results from an investigation into long-range detection and monitoring of Electromagnetic (EM) side-channel signals leaked from Internet-of-Things (IoT) and Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) devices. Our work shows that operational information and program activities of the IoT and FPGA modules can be garnered at distances excess of 25 m in an indoor Line-Of-Sight (LOS) environment, while at about 10 m in an indoor (through the wall) Non-Line-Of Sight (NLOS) scenario. We provide a propagation model that can be used to predict the received power (and corresponding variation i.e., shadowing gain) of leaked EM side-channel signals at various distances and scenarios. A standard benchmark program bitcount used in the performance evaluation of ARMbased microprocessors and a microbenchmark SAVAT running on an IoT device were detected and monitored remotely in our work.