A new countermeasure against side-channel attacks based on hardware-software co-design

Ruben Lumbiarres-Lopez, Mariano Lopez-Garcia, Enrique Canto-Navarro
2016 Microprocessors and microsystems  
This paper aims at presenting a new countermeasure against Side-Channel Analysis (SCA) attacks, whose implementation is based on a hardware-software codesign. The hardware architecture consists of a microprocessor, which executes the algorithm using a false key, and a coprocessor that performs several operations that are necessary to retrieve the original text that was encrypted with the real key. The coprocessor hardly affects the power consumption of the device, so that any classical attack
more » ... sed on such power consumption would reveal a false key. Additionally, as the operations carried out by the coprocessor are performed in parallel with the microprocessor, the execution time devoted for encrypting a specific text is not affected by the proposed countermeasure. In order to verify the correctness of our proposal, the system was implemented on a Virtex 5 FPGA. Different SCA attacks were performed on several functions of AES algorithm. Experimental results show in all cases that the system is effectively protected by revealing a false encryption key.
doi:10.1016/j.micpro.2016.06.009 fatcat:4hmxm3uxyfhyvbinq4w4vytkvi