Generic side-channel countermeasures for reconfigurable devices

  • Authors:
  • Tim Güneysu;Amir Moradi

  • Affiliations:
  • Horst Görtz Institute for IT Security, Ruhr University Bochum, Germany;Horst Görtz Institute for IT Security, Ruhr University Bochum, Germany

  • Venue:
  • CHES'11 Proceedings of the 13th international conference on Cryptographic hardware and embedded systems
  • Year:
  • 2011

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.00

Visualization

Abstract

In this work, we propose and evaluate generic hardware countermeasures against DPA attacks for recent FPGA devices. The proposed set of FPGA-specific countermeasures can be combined to resist a large variety of first-order DPA attacks, even with 100 million recorded power traces. This set includes generic and resource-efficient countermeasures for on-chip noise generation, random-data processing delays and S-box scrambling using dual-ported block memories. In particular, it is possible to build many of these countermeasures into a single IP-core or hard macro that then provides basic protection for any cryptographic implementation just by its inclusion in the design process - what is particularly useful for engineers with no or little background on security and side-channel attacks.