Encasing block ciphers to foil key recovery attempts via side channel
Giovanni Agosta, Alessandro Barenghi, Gerardo Pelosi, Michele Scandale · 2016
Providing efficient protection against energy consumption based side channel attacks (SCAs) for block ciphers is a relevant topic for the research community, as current overheads are in the 100× range. Unprofiled SCAs exploit information leakage from the outmost rounds of a cipher; we propose a solution encasing it between keyed transformations amenable to an efficient SCA protection. Our solution can be employed as a drop in replacement for an unprotected implementation, or be retrofit to an existing one, while retaining communication capabilities with legacy insecure endpoints. Experiments on a Cortex-M4 µC, show performance improvements in the range of 60×, compared with available solutions.