An enhanced differential cache attack on CLEFIA for large cache lines

Abstract

Reported results on cache trace attacks on CLEFIA do not work with increased cache line size. In this paper we present an enhanced cache trace attack on CLEFIA using the differential property of the s-boxes of the cipher and the diffusion properties of the linear transformations of the underlying Feistel structures. The attack requires 3 round keys, which are obtained by monitoring cache access patterns of 4 rounds of the cipher. A theoretical analysis is made on the complexity of the attack, while experimental results are presented to show the effectiveness of power and timing side-channels in deducing cache access patterns. The efficacy of the attack is theoretically justified by showing the effect of cache line size on the time and space complexity of the attack. Finally countermeasures that guarantee security against cache-attacks are compared for their efficiency on large cache lines. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.