Electromagnetic Side-Channel Attack Resilience against PRESENT Lightweight Block Cipher

Gunathilake, Nilupulee A.; Al-Dubai, Ahmed; Buchanan, William J.; Lo, Owen

Abstract

Lightweight cryptography is a novel diversion from conventional cryptography that targets internet-of-things (IoT) platform due to resource constraints. In comparison, it offers smaller cryptographic primitives such as shorter key sizes, block sizes and lesser energy drainage. The main focus can be seen in algorithm developments in this emerging subject. Thus, verification is carried out based upon theoretical (mathematical) proofs mostly. Among the few available side-channel analysis studies found in literature, the highest percentage is taken by power attacks. PRESENT is a promising lightweight block cipher to be included in IoT devices in the near future. Thus, the emphasis of this paper is on lightweight cryptology, and our investigation shows unavailability of a correlation electromagnetic analysis (CEMA) of it. Hence, in an effort to fill in this research gap, we opted to investigate the capabilities of CEMA against the PRESENT algorithm. This work aims to determine the probability of secret key leakage with a minimum number of electromagnetic (EM) waveforms possible. The process initially started from a simple EM analysis (SEMA) and gradually enhanced up to a CEMA. This paper presents our methodology in attack modelling, current results that indicate a probability of leaking seven bytes of the key and upcoming plans for optimisa-tion. In addition, introductions to lightweight cryptanalysis and theories of EMA are also included.

Citation

Gunathilake, N. A., Al-Dubai, A., Buchanan, W. J., & Lo, O. (2022). Electromagnetic Side-Channel Attack Resilience against PRESENT Lightweight Block Cipher. In 2022 6th International Conference on Cryptography, Security and Privacy (CSP). https://doi.org/10.1109/CSP55486.2022.00018

• Conference Name: 2022 IEEE 6th International Conference on Cryptography, Security and Privacy (CSP 2022)
• Conference Location: Tianjin, China
• Start Date: Jan 14, 2022
• End Date: Jan 16, 2022
• Acceptance Date: Dec 21, 2021
• Online Publication Date: Aug 11, 2022
• Publication Date: 2022
• Deposit Date: May 5, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: May 5, 2022
• Publisher: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
• Book Title: 2022 6th International Conference on Cryptography, Security and Privacy (CSP)
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/CSP55486.2022.00018
• Keywords: Lightweight cryptology; PRESENT cipher; electromagnetic side-channel analysis
• Public URL: http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/Output/2869629