A Countermeasure against DPA on SIMON with an Area-Efficient Structure

Differential power analysis (DPA) is an effective side channel attack method, which poses a critical threat to cryptographic algorithms, especially lightweight ciphers such as SIMON. In this paper, we propose an area-efficient countermeasure against DPA on SIMON based on the power randomization. Firstly, we review and analyze the architecture of SIMON algorithm. Secondly, we prove the threat of DPA attack to SIMON by launching actual DPA attack on SIMON 32/64 circuit. Thirdly, a low-cost power randomization scheme is proposed by combining fault injection with double rate technology, and the corresponding circuit design is implemented. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first scheme that applies the combination of fault injection and double rate technology to the DPA-resistance. Finally, the t-test is used to evaluate the security mechanism of the proposed designs with leakage quantification. Our experimental results show that the proposed design implements DPA-resistance of SIMON algorithm at certain overhead the cost of 47.7% LUTs utilization and 39.6% registers consumption. As compared to threshold implementation and bool mask, the proposed scheme has greater advantages in resource consumption. View Full-Tex