Abstract:

Due to the programmable features,FPGAs have been prevalent in security applications using cryptographic algorithms.Recently,electromagnetic side-channel analysis attacks have become a major threat to these hardware implementations.On the basis of the hardware architecture of field programmable gate arrays,we propose an electromagnetic side-channel countermeasure based on random pre-obfuscation logic units.These logic units are implemented using the look-up table architecture and inserted with elaborated timing adjustments,on the basis of which the initial state of the combinatorial logic and the state transition of the sequential logic are hidden,so as to reduce the correlation between electromagnetic radiation and the key.After applying the countermeasure to the Advanced Encryption Standard circuit,experimental results show that the number of electromagnetic curves required to crack the key increases from 94 to more than 100 000.This means that the electromagnetic side-channel security is improved by 1 000 times at least.In terms of overhead,the resource and power increase only by 1.1% and 1.47% respectively,with no additional performance overhead introduced.

Key words: field programmable gate arrays, hardware security, electromagnetic analysis attack, side channel countermeasure