Securing lightweight block cipher against power analysis attacks

Abstract

Side-channel attacks are cryptanalytic methods against cryptographic implementations. Such implementations running on resource constrained devices are particularly vulnerable to these attacks. In this context, every legal user has a full control over these devices and thus be capable of tampering with them at his own will. The hostile environments within which lightweight block cipher implementations are working determine that their physical security are seriously threatened by side-channel attacks, especially power analysis attacks. In this paper, we investigate the vulnerabilities of lightweight block cipher implementations on resource constrained devices against power analysis attacks, and then propose an algorithmic countermeasure called Bitwisely Balanced enCoding (BBC). Taking LBlock and PRESENT as two cases of study, we perform simulation experiments, and the results show that BBC countermeasure can obtain high security with reasonable cost. © 2012 Springer-Verlag GmbH.