Wire-Tap Codes as Side-Channel Countermeasure - an FPGA-based experiment

In order to provide security against side-channel attacks a masking scheme which makes use of wire-tap codes has recently been proposed. The scheme benefits from the features of binary linear codes, and its application to AES has been presented in the seminal article. In this work – with respect to the underlying scheme – we re-iterate the fundamental operations of the AES cipher in a hopefully more understandable terminology. Considering an FPGA platform we address the challenges each AES operation incurs in terms of implementation complexity. We show different scenarios on how to realize the SubBytes operation as the most critical issue is to deal with the large S-boxes encoded by the underlying scheme. Constructing various designs to actualize a full AES-128 encryption engine of the scheme, we provide practical side-channel evaluations based on traces collected from a Spartan-6 FPGA platform. As a result, we show that – despite nice features of the scheme - with respect to its area and power overhead its advantages are very marginal unless its fault-detection ability is also being employed

Orthogonal Direct Sum Masking: A Smartcard Friendly Computation Paradigm in a Code, with Builtin Protection against Side-Channel and Fault Attacks

Secure elements, such as smartcards or trusted platform modules (TPMs), must be protected against implementation-level attacks. Those include side-channel and fault injection attacks. We introduce ODSM, Orthogonal Direct Sum Masking, a new computation paradigm that achieves protection against those two kinds of attacks. A large vector space is structured as two supplementary orthogonal subspaces. One subspace (called a code $\mathcal{C}$) is used for the functional computation, while the second subspace carries random numbers. As the random numbers are entangled with the sensitive data, ODSM ensures a protection against (monovariate) side-channel attacks. The random numbers can be checked either occasionally, or globally, thereby ensuring a fine or coarse detection capability. The security level can be formally detailed: it is proved that monovariate side-channel attacks of order up to $d_\mathcal{C}-1$, where $d_\mathcal{C}$ is the minimal distance of $\mathcal{C}$, are impossible, and that any fault of Hamming weight strictly less than $d_\mathcal{C}$ is detected. A complete instantiation of ODSM is given for AES. In this case, all monovariate side-channel attacks of order strictly less than $5$ are impossible, and all fault injections perturbing strictly less than $5$ bits are detected

A Hardware Security Solution against Scan-Based Attacks

Scan based Design for Test (DfT) schemes have been widely used to achieve high fault coverage for integrated circuits. The scan technique provides full access to the internal nodes of the device-under-test to control them or observe their response to input test vectors. While such comprehensive access is highly desirable for testing, it is not acceptable for secure chips as it is subject to exploitation by various attacks. In this work, new methods are presented to protect the security of critical information against scan-based attacks. In the proposed methods, access to the circuit containing secret information via the scan chain has been severely limited in order to reduce the risk of a security breach. To ensure the testability of the circuit, a built-in self-test which utilizes an LFSR as the test pattern generator (TPG) is proposed. The proposed schemes can be used as a countermeasure against side channel attacks with a low area overhead as compared to the existing solutions in literature

A Survey on Wireless Security: Technical Challenges, Recent Advances and Future Trends

This paper examines the security vulnerabilities and threats imposed by the inherent open nature of wireless communications and to devise efficient defense mechanisms for improving the wireless network security. We first summarize the security requirements of wireless networks, including their authenticity, confidentiality, integrity and availability issues. Next, a comprehensive overview of security attacks encountered in wireless networks is presented in view of the network protocol architecture, where the potential security threats are discussed at each protocol layer. We also provide a survey of the existing security protocols and algorithms that are adopted in the existing wireless network standards, such as the Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, WiMAX, and the long-term evolution (LTE) systems. Then, we discuss the state-of-the-art in physical-layer security, which is an emerging technique of securing the open communications environment against eavesdropping attacks at the physical layer. We also introduce the family of various jamming attacks and their counter-measures, including the constant jammer, intermittent jammer, reactive jammer, adaptive jammer and intelligent jammer. Additionally, we discuss the integration of physical-layer security into existing authentication and cryptography mechanisms for further securing wireless networks. Finally, some technical challenges which remain unresolved at the time of writing are summarized and the future trends in wireless security are discussed.Comment: 36 pages. Accepted to Appear in Proceedings of the IEEE, 201

Countermeasures of power analysis

Postranní kanály ovlivňují razantně bezpečnost kryptografických systémů, proto je nutné jim věnovat pozornost při implementaci šifrovacího algoritmu. V této práci jsou v počátku uvedeny základní typy postraních kanálu a jaké útoky se pomocí nich provádí. V následující část jsou popsány druhy ochran proti útoku postranními kanály, z kterých je nejvíce kladen důraz na maskování, z důvodu možné implementace i na stávající kryptografické systémy. Poté jsou představeny maskovací techniky pro šifru AES, kde je popsán jejich způsob maskování, úprava šifrovacího algoritmu a především vůči kterým útokům odolají. V praktické části je popsáno měření, které se snaží zaznamenat proudovou spotřebu mikrokontroleru. Měření mělo za účel zkoumat především na únik informací pomocí proudového postranního kanálu.Side channels affect a security of the cryptographic systems, due to it is necessary to focus on implementation of the algorithm. There are mention basic classification of side channels in the beginning of the work. The following chapter describes types of countermeasures against side channel attack, which the most emphasis on masking, because of possible implementations on existing cryptosystems. Masking techniques are introduces in the following chapter, where is a description of their method of masking, treatment of cipher and their resistance against attack. The practical part describes the measurements that are trying to record the power consumption of the microcontroller. Measurement was designed to examine primarily on information leakage through power side channel.

Security performance and protocol consideration in optical communication system with optical layer security enabled by optical coding techniques

With the fast development of communication systems, network security issues have more and more impact on daily life. It is essential to construct a high degree of optical layer security to resolve the security problem once and for all. Three different techniques which can provide optical layer security are introduced and compared. Optical chaos can be used for fast random number generation. Quantum cryptography is the most promising technique for key distribution. And the optical coding techniques can be deployed to encrypt the modulated signal in the optical layer. A mathematical equation has been derived from information theory to evaluate the information-theoretic security level of the wiretap channel in optical coding schemes. And the merits and limitation of two coherent optical coding schemes, temporal phase coding and spectral phase coding, have been analysed. The security scheme based on a reconfigurable optical coding device has been introduced, and the corresponding security protocol has been developed. By moving the encryption operation from the electronic layer to the optical layer, the modulated signals become opaque to the unauthorised users. Optical code distribution and authentication is the one of the major challenges for our proposed scheme. In our proposed protocol, both of the operations are covered and defined in detail. As a preliminary draft of the optical code security protocol, it could be a useful guidance for further research