Abstract
Ferroelectric RAM (FRAM) is a promising non-volatile memory technology that is now available in low-end microcontrollers. Its main advantages over Flash memories are faster write performances and much larger tolerated number of write/erase cycles. These properties are profitable for the efficient implementation of side-channel countermeasures exploiting pre-computations. In this paper, we illustrate the interest of FRAM-based microcontrollers for physically secure cryptographic hardware with two case studies. First we consider a recent shuffling scheme for the AES algorithm, exploiting randomized program memories. We exhibit significant performance gains over previous results in an Atmel microcontroller, thanks to the fine-grained programmability of FRAM. Next and most importantly, we propose the first working implementation of the “masking with randomized look-up table” countermeasure, applied to reduced versions of the block cipher LED. This implementation provides unconditional security against side-channel attacks (of all orders!) under the assumption that pre-computations can be performed without leakage. It also provides high security levels in cases where this assumption is relaxed (e.g. for context or performance reasons).
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Notes
- 1.
Strictly speaking, FRAM is not a new technology as it was introduced as a high-security alternative to Flash memories back in the early 2000 s by Fujitsu. However, FRAM-based smart cards did not make it to mass market at that time, due to excessive manufacturing costs and limited ability to reduce cell transistor size.
- 2.
As a typical example, \(\mathsf {L}_2=\mathsf {L}_2^a+\mathsf {L}_2^b\) would correspond to an ideal implementation, while \(\mathsf {L}_2=\mathsf {L}_2^a \cdot \mathsf {L}_2^b\) would leak first-order information, as discussed in [19].
- 3.
This has no impact on the security in case of secure pre-computation, but may increase the information leakage in case of online randomization of the tables.
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Acknowledgements
Stéphanie Kerckhof is a PhD student funded by a FRIA grant, Belgium. François-Xavier Standaert is a research associate of the Belgian Fund for Scientific Research (FNRS-F.R.S.). This work has been funded in parts by the Walloon region WIST program project MIPSs, by the European Commission through the ERC project 280141 (acronym CRASH) and by the European ISEC action grant HOME/2010/ISEC/AG/INT-011 B-CCENTRE.
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Kerckhof, S., Standaert, FX., Peeters, E. (2014). From New Technologies to New Solutions. In: Francillon, A., Rohatgi, P. (eds) Smart Card Research and Advanced Applications. CARDIS 2013. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 8419. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-08302-5_2
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