Cryptanalysis of CLEFIA using differential methods with cache trace patterns

Abstract

In this paper we use a combination of differential techniques and cache traces to attack the block cipher CLEFIA in less than 214 encryptions on an embedded processor with a cache line size of 32 bytes. The attack is evaluated on an implementation of CLEFIA on the PowerPC processor present in the SASEBO side channel attack evaluation board. The paper shows that although obtaining cache access patterns from the power consumption of the device may be difficult due to the non-blocking cache architectures of modern processors, still the cache trace has a distinct signature on the power profiles. Experimental results have been presented to show that the power consumption of the device reveal the cache access patterns, which are then used to obtain the CLEFIA key. Further, a simple low overhead countermeasure is implemented that is guaranteed to prevent cache attacks. © 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.