Drop-In Masked Modular Reduction for ML-DSA: Cutting Side-Channel Cost in the Root-of-Trust

Merve Karabulut; Reza Azarderakhsh

Paper 2026/711

Drop-In Masked Modular Reduction for ML-DSA: Cutting Side-Channel Cost in the Root-of-Trust

Merve Karabulut

, Florida Atlantic University

Reza Azarderakhsh

, Florida Atlantic University, PQSecure Technologies

Abstract

Masking is an effective defense against side-channel attacks, yet it remains costly under hardware constraints. The Caliptra Root-of-Trust is a representative case, where its masked ML-DSA implementation incurs about 6× area overhead. We propose a novel first-order masking solution that optimizes Caliptra, achieving significant improvements in area–delay efficiency. Compared to Caliptra’s ML-DSA reduction, our design achieves a 12.1× speedup, reducing LUTs by 86.7% and FFs by 94.5%, while improving area–delay efficiency by 91×. TVLA, with over 1,000,000 traces, shows no first-order leakage, satisfies Caliptra’s security requirements, and significantly improves implementation efficiency.

Metadata

Available format(s): PDF
Category: Attacks and cryptanalysis
Publication info: Published elsewhere. Design Automation Conference (DAC 2026)
Keywords: ML-DSA post-quantum cryptography masking side-channel attacks hardware security
Contact author(s): mkarabulut2024 @ fau edu
razarderakhsh @ fau edu
History: 2026-04-12: approved; 2026-04-11: received; See all versions
Short URL: https://ia.cr/2026/711
License: CC BY

BibTeX

@misc{cryptoeprint:2026/711,
      author = {Merve Karabulut and Reza Azarderakhsh},
      title = {Drop-In Masked Modular Reduction for {ML}-{DSA}: Cutting Side-Channel Cost in the Root-of-Trust},
      howpublished = {Cryptology {ePrint} Archive, Paper 2026/711},
      year = {2026},
      url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2026/711}
}