A Power Balanced Against Side Channel Attack SM4 Algorithm Based on RRAM/CMOS Hybrid Technology

Pengju Wang, Yuejun Zhang, Hongshuai Wei, Huihong Zhang · 2024

The SM4 algorithm is now widely used to ensure the security of data transmission, but its physical implementation is still vulnerable to side channel attack. By studying the structure of SM4 algorithm, this paper proposes a scheme of SM4 algorithm against side-channel attack based on RRAM/CMOS hybrid power balancing. The scheme first studies the dynamic power balancing mechanism under the cooperative operation mode of RRAM cell and CMOS, and designs the complementary output RRAM/CMOS hybrid power balancing cell circuit by utilizing the RRAM programmable resistor states and the efficient control of CMOS logic gates; then, the leakage analysis reveals that there is a vulnerability of SM4 algorithm hardware implementation in the wheel output. To address this issue, the power balancing cell circuit is applied to the wheel output position of SM4 algorithm to decouple the correlation between power consumption and data in the output stage; finally, the power consumption curve is extracted by Spectre simulation under TSMC 65nm process and verified against correlation power analysis (CPA) attack. The experimental results demonstrate that, compared with the traditional implementation, the circuit proposed in this paper can still defend against CPA attack with 1200 power consumption curves, with more than two times higher hardware security than the traditional SM4 implementation.

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