Hardware implementations, SCA/FIA attacks, and countermeasures for the ASCON AEAD cipher: a review
Miguel Martín‐González, Erica Tena‐Sánchez, Francisco Eugenio Potestad Ordóñez, Antonio J. Acosta · 2024
The design and implementation of lightweightoriented ciphers on hardware is an ever more important topic in Internet of Things (IoT) given the increasing abundance of devices needing secure communication in our modern society. Ascon was selected in 2023 as the new standard algorithm with authenticated encryption with associated data (AEAD) for lightweight applications by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). This paper offers a full bibliographic recollection of hardware implementations, attacks and countermeasures published about Ascon. From which Ascon has proven its simplicity allows many implementation design approaches to achieve great performance while staying lightweight. However, its unprotected implementations are not safe from hardware attacks, some of the published attacks even being able to dodge countermeasures. Ascon is expected to thrive as the new standard in its field, although further work is required in the development of secure implementations before it does so.