Key-Recovery Fault Injection Attack on the Classic McEliece KEM

Sabine Pircher; Johannes Geier; Julian Danner; Daniel Mueller-Gritschneder; Antonia Wachter-Zeh

Paper 2022/1529

Key-Recovery Fault Injection Attack on the Classic McEliece KEM

Sabine Pircher

, Technical University of Munich, HENSOLDT Cyber GmbH

Johannes Geier

, Technical University of Munich

Julian Danner, University of Passau

Daniel Mueller-Gritschneder

, Technical University of Munich

Antonia Wachter-Zeh

, Technical University of Munich

Abstract

We present a key-recovery fault injection attack on the Classic McEliece Key Encapsulation Mechanism (KEM). The fault injections target the error-locator polynomial of the Goppa code and the validity checks in the decryption algorithm, making a chosen ciphertext attack possible. Faulty decryption outputs are used to generate a system of polynomial equations in the secret support elements of the Goppa code. After solving the equations, we can determine a suitable Goppa polynomial and form an alternative secret key. To demonstrate the feasibility of the attack on hardware, we simulate the fault injections on virtual prototypes of two RISC-V cores at register-transfer level.

Metadata

Available format(s): PDF
Category: Attacks and cryptanalysis
Publication info: Preprint.
Keywords: Post-Quantum Cryptography Key Recovery Fault Attack Classic McEliece
Contact author(s): sabine pircher @ tum de
johannes geier @ tum de
julian danner @ uni-passau de
daniel mueller @ tum de
antonia wachter-zeh @ tum de
History: 2022-11-07: approved; 2022-11-04: received; See all versions
Short URL: https://ia.cr/2022/1529
License: CC BY

BibTeX

@misc{cryptoeprint:2022/1529,
      author = {Sabine Pircher and Johannes Geier and Julian Danner and Daniel Mueller-Gritschneder and Antonia Wachter-Zeh},
      title = {Key-Recovery Fault Injection Attack on the Classic {McEliece} {KEM}},
      howpublished = {Cryptology {ePrint} Archive, Paper 2022/1529},
      year = {2022},
      url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2022/1529}
}