Physical Time-Varying Transfer Function as Generic Low-Overhead Power-SCA Countermeasure
Mathematically secure cryptographic algorithms leak significant side-channel information through their power supplies when implemented on a physical platform. These side-channel leakages can be exploited by an attacker to extract the secret key of an embedded device. The existing state-of-the-art co...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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IEEE
2023-01-01
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| Series: | IEEE Open Journal of Circuits and Systems |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10208218/ |
| _version_ | 1797352823817502720 |
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| author | Archisman Ghosh Debayan Das Shreyas Sen |
| author_facet | Archisman Ghosh Debayan Das Shreyas Sen |
| author_sort | Archisman Ghosh |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Mathematically secure cryptographic algorithms leak significant side-channel information through their power supplies when implemented on a physical platform. These side-channel leakages can be exploited by an attacker to extract the secret key of an embedded device. The existing state-of-the-art countermeasures mainly focus on power balancing, gate-level masking, or signal-to-noise (SNR) reduction using noise injection and signature attenuation, all of which suffer either from the limitations of high power/area overheads, throughput degradation or are not synthesizable. In this article, we propose a generic low-overhead digital-friendly power SCA countermeasure utilizing a physical Time-Varying Transfer Function (TVTF) by randomly shuffling distributed switched capacitors to significantly obfuscate the traces in the time domain. We evaluate our proposed technique utilizing a MATLAB-based system-level simulation. Finally, we implement a 65nm CMOS prototype IC and evaluate our technique against power side-channel attacks (SCA). System-level simulation results of the TVTF-AES show <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\sim 5000\times $ </tex-math></inline-formula> minimum traces to disclosure (MTD) improvement over the unprotected implementation with <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\sim 1.25\times $ </tex-math></inline-formula> power and <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\sim 1.2\times $ </tex-math></inline-formula> area overheads, and without any performance degradation. SCA evaluation with the prototype IC shows <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$3.4M$ </tex-math></inline-formula> MTD which is <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$500\times $ </tex-math></inline-formula> greater than the unprotected solution. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-08T13:22:22Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-330ab06467884cf98005af26e8cd41e8 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 2644-1225 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-08T13:22:22Z |
| publishDate | 2023-01-01 |
| publisher | IEEE |
| record_format | Article |
| series | IEEE Open Journal of Circuits and Systems |
| spelling | doaj.art-330ab06467884cf98005af26e8cd41e82024-01-18T00:01:32ZengIEEEIEEE Open Journal of Circuits and Systems2644-12252023-01-01422824010.1109/OJCAS.2023.330225410208218Physical Time-Varying Transfer Function as Generic Low-Overhead Power-SCA CountermeasureArchisman Ghosh0https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7842-030XDebayan Das1https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1843-0124Shreyas Sen2https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5566-8946Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USAIndian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, IndiaIndian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, IndiaMathematically secure cryptographic algorithms leak significant side-channel information through their power supplies when implemented on a physical platform. These side-channel leakages can be exploited by an attacker to extract the secret key of an embedded device. The existing state-of-the-art countermeasures mainly focus on power balancing, gate-level masking, or signal-to-noise (SNR) reduction using noise injection and signature attenuation, all of which suffer either from the limitations of high power/area overheads, throughput degradation or are not synthesizable. In this article, we propose a generic low-overhead digital-friendly power SCA countermeasure utilizing a physical Time-Varying Transfer Function (TVTF) by randomly shuffling distributed switched capacitors to significantly obfuscate the traces in the time domain. We evaluate our proposed technique utilizing a MATLAB-based system-level simulation. Finally, we implement a 65nm CMOS prototype IC and evaluate our technique against power side-channel attacks (SCA). System-level simulation results of the TVTF-AES show <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\sim 5000\times $ </tex-math></inline-formula> minimum traces to disclosure (MTD) improvement over the unprotected implementation with <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\sim 1.25\times $ </tex-math></inline-formula> power and <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\sim 1.2\times $ </tex-math></inline-formula> area overheads, and without any performance degradation. SCA evaluation with the prototype IC shows <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$3.4M$ </tex-math></inline-formula> MTD which is <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$500\times $ </tex-math></inline-formula> greater than the unprotected solution.https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10208218/Power side-channel attacklow-overhead countermeasurephysical obfuscationtime-varying transfer functionsynthesizablegeneric |
| spellingShingle | Archisman Ghosh Debayan Das Shreyas Sen Physical Time-Varying Transfer Function as Generic Low-Overhead Power-SCA Countermeasure IEEE Open Journal of Circuits and Systems Power side-channel attack low-overhead countermeasure physical obfuscation time-varying transfer function synthesizable generic |
| title | Physical Time-Varying Transfer Function as Generic Low-Overhead Power-SCA Countermeasure |
| title_full | Physical Time-Varying Transfer Function as Generic Low-Overhead Power-SCA Countermeasure |
| title_fullStr | Physical Time-Varying Transfer Function as Generic Low-Overhead Power-SCA Countermeasure |
| title_full_unstemmed | Physical Time-Varying Transfer Function as Generic Low-Overhead Power-SCA Countermeasure |
| title_short | Physical Time-Varying Transfer Function as Generic Low-Overhead Power-SCA Countermeasure |
| title_sort | physical time varying transfer function as generic low overhead power sca countermeasure |
| topic | Power side-channel attack low-overhead countermeasure physical obfuscation time-varying transfer function synthesizable generic |
| url | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10208218/ |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT archismanghosh physicaltimevaryingtransferfunctionasgenericlowoverheadpowerscacountermeasure AT debayandas physicaltimevaryingtransferfunctionasgenericlowoverheadpowerscacountermeasure AT shreyassen physicaltimevaryingtransferfunctionasgenericlowoverheadpowerscacountermeasure |