Cryptology ePrint Archive: Report 2015/924

Masking Large Keys in Hardware: A Masked Implementation of McEliece

Cong Chen and Thomas Eisenbarth and Ingo von Maurich and Rainer Steinwandt

Abstract: Instantiations of the McEliece cryptosystem which are considered computationally secure even in a post-quantum era still require hardening against side channel attacks for practical applications. Recently, the first differential power analysis attack on a McEliece cryptosystem successfully recovered the full secret key of a state-of-the-art FPGA implementation of QC-MDPC McEliece. In this work we show how to apply masking countermeasures to the scheme and present the first masked FPGA implementation that includes these countermeasures. We validate the side channel resistance of our design by practical DPA attacks and statistical tests for leakage detection.

Category / Keywords: implementation / Threshold Implementation, McEliece Cryptosystem, QC-MDPC Codes, FPGA

Original Publication (in the same form): Selected Areas in Cryptography - SAC 2015

Date: received 22 Sep 2015

Contact author: teisenbarth at wpi edu

Available format(s): PDF | BibTeX Citation

Version: 20150922:210243 (All versions of this report)

Short URL: ia.cr/2015/924

Discussion forum: Show discussion | Start new discussion