Paper 2018/597

Consolidating Security Notions in Hardware Masking

Lauren De Meyer and Begül Bilgin and Oscar Reparaz

Abstract

This paper revisits the security conditions of masked hardware implementations. We describe a new, succinct, information-theoretic condition to ensure security in the presence of glitches. This single condition includes, but is not limited to, previous security notions such as those used in threshold implementations. As a consequence, we can prove the security of masked functions that work with non-uniform input sharings. Our notion naturally generalizes to higher orders. Furthermore, we can apply our condition in a tool that efficiently tests and validates the resistance of masked hardware circuits against DPA. Finally, we also treat the notion of (strong) non-interference from an information-theoretic point-of-view in order to unify the different security concepts and pave the way to the verification of composability in the presence of glitches.