Backing the Wrong Horse: How Bit-Level Netlist Augmentation can Counter Power Side Channel Attacks

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2510.04640v1
• Date: Mon, 06 Oct 2025 09:45:00 GMT
• Title: Backing the Wrong Horse: How Bit-Level Netlist Augmentation can Counter Power Side Channel Attacks
• Authors: Ali Asghar, Andreas Becher, Daniel Ziener,
• Abstract summary: dependence of power-consumption on the processed data is a known vulnerability of CMOS circuits.<n>Power-based side channel attacks can extract sensitive information, such as secret keys, from the implementation of cryptographic algorithms.
• Score: 0.45880283710344066
• License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Abstract: The dependence of power-consumption on the processed data is a known vulnerability of CMOS circuits, resulting in side channels which can be exploited by power-based side channel attacks (SCAs). These attacks can extract sensitive information, such as secret keys, from the implementation of cryptographic algorithms. Existing countermeasures against power-based side channel attacks focus on analyzing information leakage at the byte level. However, this approach neglects the impact of individual bits on the overall resistance of a cryptographic implementation. In this work, we present a countermeasure based on single-bit leakage. The results suggest that the proposed countermeasure cannot be broken by attacks using conventional SCA leakage models.

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