Private circuits: Securing hardware against probing attacks

Abstract

Can you guarantee secrecy even if an adversary can eavesdrop on your brain? We consider the problem of protecting privacy in circuits, when faced with an adversary that can access a bounded number of wires in the circuit. This question is motivated by side channel attacks, which allow an adversary to gain partial access to the inner workings of hardware. Recent work has shown that side channel attacks pose a serious threat to cryptosystems implemented in embedded devices. In this paper, we develop theoretical foundations for security against side channels. In particular, we propose several efficient techniques for building private circuits resisting this type of attacks. We initiate a systematic study of the complexity of such private circuits, and in contrast to most prior work in this area provide a formal threat model and give proofs of security for our constructions. © International Association for Cryptologic Research 2003.