Low-Cost Full Correlated-Power-Noise Generator to Counteract Side-Channel Attacks

Considerable attention has been given to addressing side-channel attacks to improve the security of cryptographic hardware implementations. These attacks encourage the exploration of various countermeasures across different levels of abstraction, through masking and hiding techniques, mainly. In thi...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: Tena Sánchez, Erica, Potestad Ordóñez, Francisco Eugenio, Zúñiga González, Virginia, Acosta Jiménez, Antonio José
Format: article
Status:Published version
Publication Date:2025
Country:España
Institution:Universidad de Sevilla (US)
Repository:idUS. Depósito de Investigación de la Universidad de Sevilla
OAI Identifier:oai:idus.us.es:11441/171312
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/11441/171312
https://doi.org/10.3390/app15063064
Access Level:Open access
Keyword:CPA attacks
Hiding countermeasures
Correlated power noise generator
FPGA
AES
Hardware security
Description
Summary:Considerable attention has been given to addressing side-channel attacks to improve the security of cryptographic hardware implementations. These attacks encourage the exploration of various countermeasures across different levels of abstraction, through masking and hiding techniques, mainly. In this paper, we introduce a novel hiding countermeasure designed to mitigate Correlation Power Analysis (CPA) attacks without significant overhead. The new countermeasure interferes with the processed data, minimizing the power correlation with the secret key. The proposed method involves using a Correlated-Power-Noise Generator (CPNG). This study is supported by experimental results using CPA attacks on a SAKURA-G board with a SPARTAN-6 Xilinx FPGA. An Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) cipher with 128/256-bit key size is employed for this purpose. The proposed secure design of AES has an area overhead of 29.04% compared to unprotected AES. After conducting a CPA attack, the acquisition of information about the private key has been reduced drastically by 44.5%.