Secure evolutionary hardware for public-key cryptosystems

Abstract

In this paper, genetic programming is used as an alternative methodology to automatically generate secure and minimal hardware designs of public-key cryptosystems such as RSA encryption system. We evolve optimal hardware circuits for modular exponentiation, which a cornerstone operation in almost every cryptographic system. The evolved circuits minimize both space (i.e. required gate number) and time (i.e. encryption and decryption time). The evolved designs are shielded against side-channel leakage and hence secure. The structure of the cryptographic circuit is random and so the private key cannot be deduced using known attacks. We compare our results against existing well-known designs, which were produced by human designers based on the binary method.