[Resource Topic] 2019/937: Fault Template Attacks on Block Ciphers Exploiting Fault Propagation

Welcome to the resource topic for 2019/937

Title:
Fault Template Attacks on Block Ciphers Exploiting Fault Propagation

Authors: Sayandeep Saha, Arnab Bag, Debapriya Basu Roy, Sikhar Patranabis, Debdeep Mukhopadhyay

Abstract:

Fault attacks (FA) are one of the potent practical threats to modern cryptographic implementations. Over the years the FA techniques have evolved, gradually moving towards the exploitation of device-centric properties of the faults. In this paper, we exploit the fact that activation and propagation of a fault through a given combinational circuit (i.e., observability of a fault) is data-dependent. Next, we show that this property of combinational circuits leads to powerful Fault Template Attacks (FTA), even for implementations having dedicated protections against both power and fault-based vulnerabilities. The attacks found in this work are applicable even if the fault injection is made at the middle rounds of a block cipher, which are out of reach for most of the other existing fault analysis strategies. Quite evidently, they also work for a known-plaintext scenario. Moreover, the middle round attacks are entirely blind in the sense that no access to the ciphertexts (correct/faulty) or plaintexts are required. The adversary is only assumed to have the power of repeating an unknown plaintext several times. Practical validation over a hardware implementation of SCA-FA protected PRESENT, and simulated evaluation on a public software implementation of protected AES prove the efficacy of the proposed attacks.

ePrint: https://eprint.iacr.org/2019/937

Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKHJFe4HoI0

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