The increasing pervasiveness of embedded and IoT devices and the consequent growth in the amount of data to be processed and exchanged mandates a systematic use of cryptography to ensure confidentiality, authenticity and integrity of communications. Over time, cryptographic techniques have improved considerably, so that cryptanalytic attacks have been made not feasible in reasonable times. On the other hand, this pervasive diffusion of devices has put the attacker in the position of being more likely in physical proximity, or in some cases, in possession of the components. This has enabled for a plethora of attacks aimed more at the weaknesses in the physical implementations of devices, rather than those of mathematical algorithms, in a way that simply could have not been accounted by cryptographers.