Paper 2020/966

EM-Side-Channel Resistant Symmetric-Key Authentication Mechanism for Small Devices

Rick Boivie and Charanjit S. Jutla and Daniel Friedman and Ghavam Shahidi

Abstract

We provide a novel electro-magnetic (EM) side-channel resistant symmetric-key authentication mechanism for small devices that uses a Benes network to permute the on-board authentication-key before computing a MAC of a challenge with the key. The permutation itself is derived from the challenge using a hash function acting as a random oracle. The solution has interesting applications such as forgery detection of currency bills.

Note: Typos in the Benes network description were fixed.