Extended Abstract: Synthesizable Low-overhead Circuit-level Countermeasures and Pro-Active Detection Techniques for Power and EM SCA

TL;DR

This paper presents low-overhead, synthesizable circuit-level countermeasures and proactive detection techniques for power and electromagnetic side-channel attacks, along with a silicon-verified implementation of a post-quantum cryptographic algorithm.

Contribution

It introduces a zero-overhead inductive sensor for detecting side-channel and fault injection attacks, and provides the first silicon-verified, energy-efficient implementation of the Saber post-quantum cryptographic scheme.

Findings

The inductive sensor effectively detects EM SCA and fault injections.

The Saber implementation is the lowest energy and area among candidates.

The proposed countermeasures significantly reduce overhead in IoT devices.

Abstract

The gamut of todays internet-connected embedded devices has led to increased concerns regarding the security and confidentiality of data. Most internet-connected embedded devices employ mathematically secure cryptographic algorithms to address security vulnerabilities. Despite such mathematical guarantees, as these algorithms are often implemented in silicon, they leak critical information in terms of power consumption, electromagnetic (EM) radiation, timing, cache hits and misses, photonic emission and so on, leading to side-channel analysis (SCA) attacks. This thesis focuses on low overhead generic circuit-level yet synthesizable countermeasures against power and EM SCA. Existing countermeasures (including proposed) still have relatively high overhead which bars them from being used in energy-constraint IoT devices. We propose a zero-overhead integrated inductive sensor which is able to detect i)EM SCA ii) Clock glitch-based Fault Injection Attack (FIA), and iii) Voltage-glitch based Fault Injection Attack by using a simple ML algorithm. Advent of quantum computer research will open new possibilities for theoretical attacks against existing cryptographic protocols. National Institute of Standard & Technology (NIST) has standardized post-quantum cryptographic algorithms to secure crypto-systems against quantum adversary. I contribute to the standardization procedure by introducing the first silicon-verified Saber (a NIST finalist modulo Learning with Rounding scheme) which consumes lowest energy and area till date amongst all the candidates.