ChipWhisperer® by NewAE Technology Inc.
Welcome to ChipWhisperer - the complete open-source toolchain for side-channel power analysis and glitching attacks. This is the main landing page for ChipWhisperer. ChipWhisperer has been presented at conferences such as DEFCON and Blackhat, had a successful Kickstarter (that delivered ahead of schedule), and placed 2nd place in the first annual Hackaday Prize. ChipWhisperer has been used in a number of academic articles, and is featured in the Car Hacking Handbook. Portions of the design have even been used by Los Alamos Labs for an electron accelerator. You can see a full list of references on the Press page.
ChipWhisperer is maintained by NewAE Technology Inc., which sells a combination of open-source hardware, supporting tools, training, and consulting services. ChipWhisperer is trademark of NewAE Technology Inc., registered in the US and Europe. This means only NewAE can sell official products under the ChipWhisperer name, and was done to ensure products meet Quality Control Guidelines, as these fairly complex products require good testing to ensure you don't have a frustrating experience.
Beyond supporting just the ChipWhisperer project, this wiki is now growing towards the objective of offering a complete reference on embedded security.
Getting Started
Where to begin? If you're new to this area, see the Getting Started page, which details how you can get involved in side-channel power analysis. From there you can see the hardware documentation (linked below), or take one of the Training Courses.
If you're stuck, you can also get help on the Discussion Forum.
Hardware Documentation
Software Documentation
ChipWhisperer is an open-source project. All of the source code is available from the Git Repository. For more information about the software releases, see Releases or the installation instructions at Installing ChipWhisperer.
Recent Changes for 4.0
ChipWhisperer 4.0 was released in alpha. You will notice that some wiki pages have been updated to reflect the changes. We probably forgot some, so let us know on github or the forum which page needs to be updated. There is a quick overview of the changes, where you can find things like how to interact with the API in the GUI or use the module API for scripting without the GUI.
The following pages document some of the many features of the ChipWhisperer Capture and Analyzer software, along with some other ChipWhisperer interfaces:
- Installing ChipWhisperer
- Common Tool Information
- CW-Capture Tool
- CW-Analyzer Tool
- File Formats
- MATLAB Control of CW-Lite
The remaining documentation is intended for developers:
Sample Projects and Tutorials
ChipWhisperer Tutorials
The following tutorials use the ChipWhisperer software and/or hardware. They are designed to take you through a complete attack. You may also want to check the page on Embedded Attacks for more snippets of simple attacks and other things you should verify when making a secure system.
Not all tutorials are possible with all hardware. See the various tutorial pages for details.
Example Attacks / Other
While ChipWhisperer started as a side-channel power analysis platform, it has grown to be useful in other attack types. This section is designed to show you a wide variety of attacks on embedded systems, to give you an idea of what is required for building secure embedded systems. These are held on the page Embedded Attacks.
In 2016, ChipWhisperer was used as part of the CHES2016 CTF challenge. See details of the event on the CHES2016 CTF page.
See what ChipWhisperer has been used for in the "real world" by reading some Academic Papers about research using ChipWhisperer.
Recent/Upcoming Events
Upcoming events with NewAE:
- HardwareSecurity.training event in April - Maryland 4-day training.
- CHES 2018: Sponsor with exhibit booth
These are some past events that were attended by someone from NewAE:
- Embedded World 2018: Exhibit Booth
- HardwareSecurity.training event on November 6-9th in San Francisco, running security training
- CHES 2017: Gold sponsor with exhibit booth
- Blackhat USA 2017 (Hands-on Power Analysis & Glitching with the ChipWhisperer)
- COSADE 2017: Gold sponsor
- Blackhat USA 2016: Training based on ChipWhisperer, 2x talks by Colin, Arsenal
- CHES 2016: Sponsor with exhibit booth
- Blackhat USA 2014: Training class
- RECON 2014: Video and Slides
- O'Reilly Solid 2014: Demo
- COSADE 2014: Paper
- CHES 2013: Slides and Video
- Blackhat USA 2013
- iSEC Open Security Forum (April 2013)
- Design West 2013
- Blackhat EU 2013
- AtlSecCon 2013
- Blackhat Abu Dhabi 2012
Extra Notes
See the page Thanks for a note about the people who made this project possible.
ChipWhisperer is a Trademark of NewAE Technology Inc., registered in the U.S, the European Union, and China.
ChipSHOUTER is a Trademark of NewAE Technology Inc., registered in the European Union.
Trademarks used with permission.