Joshua Jaffe
More info
- Affiliation
- Cryptography Research
- Known for
- Differential power analysis (with Kocher and Jun)
Co-discoverer of differential power analysis — the name that usually gets dropped when people say "Kocher's attack".
At Paul Kocher's company Cryptography Research, Jaffe, Kocher and Benjamin Jun developed differential power analysis, presented at CRYPTO 1999. Instead of reading a single power trace, you collect thousands and let statistics reveal which key bits move the consumption. Smart cards that had survived every mathematical review gave up their keys in hours.
The technique was patented, which turned side-channel countermeasures into a licensing business; when Rambus bought the company in 2011, those patents were much of what it was paying for.