On Physical Obfuscation of Cryptographic Algorithms

  • Authors:
  • Julien Bringer;Hervé Chabanne;Thomas Icart

  • Affiliations:
  • Sagem Sécurité,;Sagem Sécurité, and Télécom ParisTech,;Sagem Sécurité, and Université du Luxembourg,

  • Venue:
  • INDOCRYPT '09 Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Cryptology in India: Progress in Cryptology
  • Year:
  • 2009

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Abstract

We describe a solution for physically obfuscating the representation of a cipher, to augment chips resistance against physical threats, by combining ideas from masking techniques and Physical Obfuscated Keys (POKs). With embedded chips --- like RFID tags --- as main motivation, we apply this strategy to the representation of a Linear Feedback Shift Register (LFSR).The application of this technique to LFSR-based stream ciphers, such as the Self Shrinking Generator, enables to share key materials between several chips within a system while increasing the resistance of the system against compromise of chips. An extension of our ideas to non-linear ciphers is also presented with an illustration onto Trivium.