Abstract
Authenticated ciphers, which combine the cryptographic services of confidentiality, integrity, and authentication into one algorithmic construct, can potentially provide improved security and efficiencies in the processing of sensitive data. However, they are vulnerable to side-channel attacks such as differential power analysis (DPA). Although the Test Vector Leakage Assessment (TVLA) methodology has been used to confirm improved resistance of block ciphers to DPA after application of countermeasures, extension of TVLA to authenticated ciphers is non-trivial, since authenticated ciphers have expanded input and output requirements, complex interfaces, and long test vectors which include protocol necessary to describe authenticated cipher operations. In this research, we upgrade the FOBOS test architecture with capability to perform TVLA on authenticated ciphers. We show that FPGA implementations of the CAESAR Round 3 candidates ACORN, Ascon, CLOC (with AES and TWINE primitives), SILC (with AES, PRESENT, and LED primitives), JAMBU (with AES and SIMON primitives), and Ketje Jr.; as well as AES-GCM, are vulnerable to 1st order DPA. We then use threshold implementations to protect the above cipher implementations against 1st order DPA, and verify the effectiveness of countermeasures using the TVLA methodology. Finally, we compare the unprotected and protected cipher implementations in terms of area, performance (maximum frequency and throughput), throughput-to-area (TP/A) ratio, power, and energy per bit (E/bit). Our results show that ACORN consumes the lowest number of resources, has the highest TP/A ratio, and is the most energy-efficient of all DPA-resistant implementations. However, Ketje Jr. has the highest throughput.
Highlights
Today’s environment of large and high-speed centralized cloud-based computing is expanding into tomorrow’s smaller and lightweight edge-based computing, which will consist of billions of devices in the “Internet of Things” (IoT)
ACORN is unique among authenticated ciphers in this research in that it is the only stream cipher
Our methodology, which leverages the Flexible Open-source workBench fOr Side-channel analysis (FOBOS) test bench, CAESAR Hardware API for Authenticated Ciphers, and related Development Package, confirms that unprotected implementations of AES-GCM, ACORN, Ascon, CLOC (AES and TWINE), SILC (AES, PRESENT, and LED), JAMBU (AES and SIMON), and Ketje Jr., in the Spartan-6 FPGA, have significant information leakage and are likely vulnerable to Differential Power Analysis (DPA)
Summary
Today’s environment of large and high-speed centralized cloud-based computing is expanding into tomorrow’s smaller and lightweight edge-based computing, which will consist of billions of devices in the “Internet of Things” (IoT). IoT devices are both resource-constrained, especially in terms of power and energy, and vulnerable to exploitation and compromise, since they are more likely to be physically accessible by an adversary. Authenticated ciphers, such as AES-GCM, are well-suited for lightweight edge devices in the IoT, since they combine the functionality of confidentiality, integrity, and authentication services, and can Cryptography 2018, 2, 26; doi:10.3390/cryptography2030026 www.mdpi.com/journal/cryptography. Ciphertext—An output from authenticated encryption, and input to authenticated decryption, which consists of data to be decrypted to Plaintext. Computational processes of authenticated ciphers, are introduced in [2], and are summarized below: Message—An input field to authenticated encryption consisting of Plaintext to be encrypted to Ciphertext, which is an output from authenticated encryption.
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