Towards the security of McEliece's cryptosystem based on Hermitian subfield subcodes

The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive security analysis for the parameter selection process, which involves the computational cost of the information set decoding algorithm using the parameters of subfield subcodes of 1-point Hermitian codes. The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive security analysis for the parameter selection process, which involves the computational cost of the information set decoding (ISD) algorithm using Hermitian subfield subcode parameters

ASSESSING AND IMPROVING THE RELIABILITY AND SECURITY OF CIRCUITS AFFECTED BY NATURAL AND INTENTIONAL FAULTS

The reliability and security vulnerability of modern electronic systems have emerged as concerns due to the increasing natural and intentional interferences. Radiation of high-energy charged particles generated from space environment or packaging materials on the substrate of integrated circuits results in natural faults. As the technology scales down, factors such as critical charge, voltage supply, and frequency change tremendously that increase the sensitivity of integrated circuits to natural faults even for systems operating at sea level. An attacker is able to simulate the impact of natural faults and compromise the circuit or cause denial of service. Therefore, instead of utilizing different approaches to counteract the effect of natural and intentional faults, a unified countermeasure is introduced. The unified countermeasure thwarts the impact of both reliability and security threats without paying the price of more area overhead, power consumption, and required time. This thesis first proposes a systematic analysis method to assess the probability of natural faults propagating the circuit and eventually being latched. The second part of this work focuses on the methods to thwart the impact of intentional faults in cryptosystems. We exploit a power-based side-channel analysis method to analyze the effect of the existing fault detection methods for natural faults on fault attack. Countermeasures for different security threats on cryptosystems are investigated separately. Furthermore, a new micro-architecture is proposed to thwart the combination of fault attacks and side-channel attacks, reducing the fault bypass rate and slowing down the key retrieval speed. The third contribution of this thesis is a unified countermeasure to thwart the impact of both natural faults and attacks. The unified countermeasure utilizes dynamically alternated multiple generator polynomials for the cyclic redundancy check (CRC) codec to resist the reverse engineering attack

Using quantum key distribution for cryptographic purposes: a survey

The appealing feature of quantum key distribution (QKD), from a cryptographic viewpoint, is the ability to prove the information-theoretic security (ITS) of the established keys. As a key establishment primitive, QKD however does not provide a standalone security service in its own: the secret keys established by QKD are in general then used by a subsequent cryptographic applications for which the requirements, the context of use and the security properties can vary. It is therefore important, in the perspective of integrating QKD in security infrastructures, to analyze how QKD can be combined with other cryptographic primitives. The purpose of this survey article, which is mostly centered on European research results, is to contribute to such an analysis. We first review and compare the properties of the existing key establishment techniques, QKD being one of them. We then study more specifically two generic scenarios related to the practical use of QKD in cryptographic infrastructures: 1) using QKD as a key renewal technique for a symmetric cipher over a point-to-point link; 2) using QKD in a network containing many users with the objective of offering any-to-any key establishment service. We discuss the constraints as well as the potential interest of using QKD in these contexts. We finally give an overview of challenges relative to the development of QKD technology that also constitute potential avenues for cryptographic research.Comment: Revised version of the SECOQC White Paper. Published in the special issue on QKD of TCS, Theoretical Computer Science (2014), pp. 62-8

Integrating Non-linear and Linear Diffusion Techniques to Prevent Fault Attacks in Advanced Encryption Standard to Enhance Security of 4G-LTE Networks

Long term evolution based fourth generation (4G) mobile technology has provided a platform for fast and efficient wireless communication. The advanced encryption standard (AES) is one of the three cryptographic algorithms used in 4G networks for encryption of sensitive data. In spite of offering high immunity, AES is still vulnerable to few attacks. This weakness in AES algorithm makes 4G susceptible to several security issues. This paper specifically focuses on fault attacks performed on AES. A fault induced in any one of the rounds of AES helps the attacker to derive information about the secret key. In this manner, these fault attacks pose a serious threat to wireless mobile communication as he or she may gain access to any network that is encrypted with AES. In earlier works, various countermeasures have been suggested to prevent them. However, each of these preventive measures has their own limitations and vulnerabilities. This paper proposes an enhanced method of preventing fault attacks in AES by incorporating a combination of non-linear and linear diffusion techniques. This method identifies if a fault has been injected and diffuses the fault well into the matrix, providing no information about the secret key to the attacker. The performance evaluation proves that the proposed prevention method outperforms the others in terms of time, cost and efficiency

Envisioning the Future of Cyber Security in Post-Quantum Era: A Survey on PQ Standardization, Applications, Challenges and Opportunities

The rise of quantum computers exposes vulnerabilities in current public key cryptographic protocols, necessitating the development of secure post-quantum (PQ) schemes. Hence, we conduct a comprehensive study on various PQ approaches, covering the constructional design, structural vulnerabilities, and offer security assessments, implementation evaluations, and a particular focus on side-channel attacks. We analyze global standardization processes, evaluate their metrics in relation to real-world applications, and primarily focus on standardized PQ schemes, selected additional signature competition candidates, and PQ-secure cutting-edge schemes beyond standardization. Finally, we present visions and potential future directions for a seamless transition to the PQ era