PSESV: A hybrid post-quantum encryption Framework with real-time thermal and EM side-channel attack detection
Donagani Ramakrishna, Mohammed Ali Shaik · Ain Shams Engineering Journal · 2025
The rapid progress of quantum computing threatens the long-term security of classical public-key cryptosystems, thereby necessitating an urgent transition toward post-quantum cryptography (PQC). While lattice-based schemes such as CRYSTALS-Kyber have emerged as strong candidates for quantum resistance, they remain highly vulnerable to runtime side-channel attacks (SCAs). To address this dual challenge, we propose Physically-Sensed Error Signature Verification (PSESV) , a dual-layer hybrid encryption framework that integrates AES-192/AES-128 segmentation with CRYSTALS-Kyber key encapsulation. Unlike conventional hybrid models, PSESV incorporates real-time monitoring through three novel modules: (i) Thermal-Electromagnetic Hash Matching (TEHM), (ii) Dynamic Differential Coefficient Validation (DDCV), and (iii) Randomized Ciphertext Replay and Response (RCRR). Simulation and hardware-in-the-loop validation on an FPGA-based cryptographic accelerator demonstrate that PSESV achieves up to 96.3 % leakage detection accuracy with only < 6 mW additional power consumption and ≤ 1.6 ms latency, significantly outperforming baseline PQC and hybrid encryption schemes. The results highlight that PSESV not only enhances robustness against EM, thermal, and fault-injection attacks but also ensures practical deployability in resource-constrained environments. In conclusion, PSESV provides a scalable and security-hardened post-quantum solution for IoT, industrial control, and cloud systems, where resilience against both quantum and physical attacks is critically required.