Moving Target and Implementation Diversity Based Countermeasures Against Side-Channel Attacks

Side-channel attacks (SCAs) are among the major threats to embedded systems’ security, where implementation characteristics of cryptographic algorithms are exploited to extract secret parameters. The most common SCAs take advantage of electromagnetic (EM) leakage or power consumption recorded during device operation by placing an EM probe over the chip or measuring the voltage drop across an internal resistor, respectively. In this work, two SCA countermeasures are presented which address these two types of leakage vectors. The first countermeasure supports implementation diversity and moving target defense, while the second one generates random algorithmic noise. These concepts are implemented using the dynamic partial reconfiguration (DPR) feature of modern FPGA devices. Both of the countermeasures are easily scalable, and the effect of scalability on the area overhead and security strength is presented. We evaluate our design by measuring EM emanations from a state-of-the-art System-on-Chip (SoC) with 16 nm production technology. With the most secure variant, we are able to increase the resistance against Correlation Power Analysis (CPA) by a factor of 95 compared to an unprotected AES implementation.