Interaction between fault attack countermeasures and the resistance against power analysis attacks

Abstract

Most of the countermeasures against fault attacks on cryptographic systems that have been developed so far are based on the addition of information redundancy. While these countermeasures have been evaluated with respect to their cost (implementation overhead) and efficiency (fault coverage), little attention has been devoted to the question of the impact their use has on the effectiveness of other types of side-channel attacks, in particular, power analysis attacks. This chapter presents an experimental study whose goal is to determine whether the added information redundancy can increase the vulnerability of a cryptographic circuit to power analysis attacks.