Case Study of a Fault Attack on Asynchronous DES Crypto-Processors

This paper proposes a practical fault attack on two asynchronous DES crypto-processors, a reference version and a hardened version, using round reduction. Because of their specific architecture, asynchronous circuits have a very specific behavior in the presence of faults. Previous works show that they are an interesting alternative to design robust systems. However, this paper demonstrates that there are weaknesses left, and that we are able both to identify and exploit them. The effect of the fault is to reduce the number of rounds by corrupting the multi-rail round counter protected by alarm cells. The fault injection mean is a laser. A description of the fault injection process is presented, followed by how the results can be used to retrieve the key. Weaknesses are theoretically identified and analyzed. Finally, possible counter-measures are described.

[1]  Régis Leveugle,et al.  Hardening techniques against transient faults for asynchronous circuits , 2005, 11th IEEE International On-Line Testing Symposium.

[2]  Rajit Manohar,et al.  Fault detection and isolation techniques for quasi delay-insensitive circuits , 2004, International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks, 2004.

[3]  Michael Tunstall,et al.  Round Reduction Using Faults , 2005 .

[4]  Régis Leveugle,et al.  Practical evaluation of fault countermeasures on asynchronous DES crypto processor , 2006, 12th IEEE International On-Line Testing Symposium (IOLTS'06).

[5]  David Naccache,et al.  The Sorcerer's Apprentice Guide to Fault Attacks , 2006, Proceedings of the IEEE.

[6]  Marc Renaudin,et al.  Asynchronous circuits and systems: a promising design alternative , 2000 .

[7]  George S. Taylor,et al.  Balanced self-checking asynchronous logic for smart card applications , 2003, Microprocess. Microsystems.

[8]  Markus G. Kuhn,et al.  Low Cost Attacks on Tamper Resistant Devices , 1997, Security Protocols Workshop.

[9]  Susan K. Langford,et al.  Differential-Linear Cryptanalysis , 1994, CRYPTO.

[10]  Yvo Desmedt,et al.  Advances in Cryptology — CRYPTO ’94 , 2001, Lecture Notes in Computer Science.