A DPA Attack on IOA Data-Dependent Delay Countermeasure Based on an Inherent Tempo-Spatial Data Dependency

Abstract

A recent attack countermeasure on an substitution box (S-box) called data dependency delay countermeasure (D3C) against a differential power analysis (DPA) has been introduced by Itamar–Osnat–Alexander (IOA). The inserted delay elements are temporally invariant however they are spatially variant. In this brief, we introduce a basic analysis of the shortcoming of flattening the power in D3C and investigate it by utilizing counterexample. In the proposed approach, we have utilized a non-true temporally random power as a shortcoming of IOA countermeasure to perform a successful DPA attack. The attack method is a chosen-plaintext attack. In this attack, the input data pattern is set to be constant to fix the delay of the D3C countermeasure. Hence, the countermeasure is bypassed and consequently the DPA attack on the S-box, which is introduced (the S-box) by IOA, is successful. By this attack, all the bits of the S-box, which was claimed as attack-proof by the D3C method, are recovered bitwise. In the first place, the S-box is modeled in an SPICE simulator to perform the proposed idea. Then, the proposed attack on IOA countermeasure is proved by HDL experimental results. The experiment is carried out via a Sakura-GW evaluation board and a Xilinx FPGA Spartan-6LX75 test-bed.