False Key-Controlled Aggressive Voltage Scaling: A Countermeasure Against LPA Attacks

Abstract

A false key-controlled aggressive voltage scaling (AVS) technique is proposed as a countermeasure against leakage power analysis (LPA) attacks. A random number of false keys are utilized to control the supply voltage scaling to mask the possible leakage of the information related to the correct key to a malicious attacker. Contrary to the random AVS technique, false key-controlled AVS technique can guarantee that the added false keys always exhibit higher correlation coefficients than that of the correct key even if sufficient number of plaintexts (>10 million) are enabled. As demonstrated with the simulation results, the measurement-to-disclose (MTD) value of a cryptographic circuit can be enhanced over ten million against LPA attacks by utilizing the proposed technique, while the MTD values of a conventional cryptographic circuit without countermeasure and one with random AVS are, respectively, less than 500 and 100,000.