Cryptology ePrint Archive: Report 2008/188

Information Leakage of Flip-Flops in DPA-Resistant Logic Styles

Amir Moradi and Thomas Eisenbarth and Axel Poschmann and Carsten Rolfes and Christof Paar and Mohammad T. Manzuri Shalmani and Mahmoud Salmasizadeh

Abstract: This contribution discusses the information leakage of flip-flops for different DPA-resistant logic styles. We show that many of the proposed side-channel resistant logic styles still employ flip-flops that leak data-dependent information. Furthermore, we apply simple models for the leakage of masked flip-flops to design a new attack on circuits implemented using masked logic styles. Contrary to previous attacks on masked logic styles, our attack does not predict the mask bit and does not need detailed knowledge about the attacked device, e.g., the circuit layout. Moreover, our attack works even if all the load capacitances of the complementary logic signals are perfectly balanced and even if the PRNG is ideally unbiased. Finally, after performing the attack on DRSL, MDPL, and iMDPL circuits we show that single-bit masks do not influence the exploitability of the revealed leakage of the masked flip-flops.

Category / Keywords: implementation / Side-Channel Attack, DPA-Resistant Logic Style, MDPL, iMDPL

Date: received 28 Apr 2008, last revised 4 May 2008

Contact author: moradi at crypto rub de

Available format(s): PDF | BibTeX Citation

Version: 20080504:100709 (All versions of this report)

Short URL: ia.cr/2008/188

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