EDSI : Activities > Evaluation
EDSI’s evaluation laboratory, founded in 1999 in Caen, assesses the security level of ICCs (Integrated Circuit Cards). Its operation is totally independent of R&D services in Cesson-Sévigné.
During each mission, the goal of our laboratory is to appraise the technical effort and estimate the financial outlay that hackers should make to unlawfully benefit from the smart card enabled service. Putting these efforts into perspective with the financial risks for the operator of the service, our laboratory assesses accordingly the suitability of the security standard achieved by the card.
To carry through this analysis, our team of evaluators not only make sure that the product put to the test is at the leading edge of technology but also endeavour to think up, and anticipate, the attacks it could suffer during its lifetime.
To reconstruct as faithfully as possible the conditions in which hackers operate our laboratory systematically carries out black box tests and implements :
- « passive » attacks, which consist in observing the operation of the IC : electricity consumption as regards SPA and DPA attacks, electromagnetic leaks as regards EMA attack…
- « active » attacks, which consist in causing a perturbation (DFA attack) and then observing its impact on the operation of the IC.
Every mission ends with the handing over of an evaluation report to the client. Besides making an inventory of the possible security flaws and giving a rating, this document also provides the developers with the key to understanding the attacks carried through for them to think up remedies.