Cryptology ePrint Archive: Report 2018/708

Masking the Lightweight Authenticated Ciphers ACORN and Ascon in Software

Alexandre Adomnicai and Jacques J.A. Fournier and Laurent Masson

Abstract: The ongoing CAESAR competition aims at finding authenticated encryption schemes that offer advantages over AES-GCM for several use-cases, including lightweight applications. ACORN and Ascon are the two finalists for this profile. Our paper compares these two candidates according to their resilience against differential power analysis and their ability to integrate countermeasures against such attacks. Especially, we focus on software implementations and provide benchmarks for several security levels on an ARM Cortex-M3 embedded microprocessor.

Category / Keywords: ACORN, Ascon, DPA, Masking

Original Publication (with minor differences): BalkanCryptSec 2018

Date: received 26 Jul 2018, last revised 17 Oct 2018

Contact author: alex adomnicai at gmail com

Available format(s): PDF | BibTeX Citation

Note: Fixed an erroneous statement regarding the randomness complexity for higher-order masking. A state update of ACORN can be implemented using only 6 nonlinear gates instead of 10.

Version: 20181017:093858 (All versions of this report)

Short URL: ia.cr/2018/708