Alongside the implementation of cryptography in hardware and software, attacks on those implementations (plus associated countermeasures) form a central challenge in cryptographic engineering. This topic is sometimes termed physical security, but, either way, it contrasts sharply with traditional cryptanalysis by targeting the concrete implementation (vs. the abstract design, i.e., the underlying theory) via techniques such as side-channel attack. Beyond the obvious motivation, there are many position statements, e.g., see [1,2,3], that outline why this challenge is important. Thus, from an educational perspective, the question is how to equip students with an appropriate, associated skill set? On one hand, it seems obvious a hands-on approach is preferable: this is an applied topic so actually doing it (assuming a background in the underlying or related theory), e.g., via Problem-Based Learning (PBL), would be most effective. Indeed, other initiatives have already used a similar approach, e.g., see [4]. However, on the other hand, our experience is that some practical and/or logistical challenges remain.[…]
https://github.com/danpage/scale
PS: From twitter thread, see-also:
https://github.com/FdLSifu/qscat
Qt Side Channel Analysis Tool to handle signal traces and more
Firmware Security 