LS-designs: Bitslice encryption for efficient masked software implementations

Abstract

Side-channel analysis is an important issue for the security of embedded cryptographic devices, and masking is one of the most investigated solutions to mitigate such attacks. In this context, efficient masking has recently been considered as a possible criteria for new block cipher designs. Previous proposals in this direction were applicable to different types of masking schemes (e.g. Boolean and polynomial). In this paper, we study possible optimizations when specializing the designs to Boolean masking. For this purpose, we first observe that bitslice ciphers have interesting properties for improving both the efficiency and the regularity of masked software implementations. Next we specify a family of block ciphers (denoted as LS-designs) that can systematically take advantage of bitslicing in a principled manner. Eventually, we evaluate both the security and performance of such designs and two of their instances, confirming excellent properties for physically secure applications.