[Resource Topic] 2020/904: A Comparison of Weight Initializers in Deep Learning-based Side-channel Analysis

Welcome to the resource topic for 2020/904

Title:
A Comparison of Weight Initializers in Deep Learning-based Side-channel Analysis

Authors: Huimin Li, Marina Krček, Guilherme Perin

Abstract:

The usage of deep learning in profiled side-channel analysis requires a careful selection of neural network hyperparameters. In recent publications, different network architectures have been presented as efficient profiled methods against protected AES implementations. Indeed, completely different convolutional neural network models have presented similar performance against public side-channel traces databases. In this work, we analyze how weight initializers’ choice influences deep neural networks’ performance in the profiled side-channel analysis. Our results show that different weight initializers provide radically different behavior. We observe that even high-performing initializers can reach significantly different performance when conducting multiple training phases. Finally, we found that this hyperparameter is more dependent on the choice of dataset than other, commonly examined, hyperparameters. When evaluating the connections with other hyperparameters, the biggest connection is observed with activation functions.

ePrint: https://eprint.iacr.org/2020/904

See all topics related to this paper.

Feel free to post resources that are related to this paper below.

Example resources include: implementations, explanation materials, talks, slides, links to previous discussions on other websites.

For more information, see the rules for Resource Topics .