Arithmetic Addition over Boolean Masking - Towards First- and Second-Order Resistance in Hardware

A common countermeasure to thwart side-channel analysis attacks is algorithmic masking. For this, algorithms that mix Boolean and arithmetic operations need to either apply two different masking schemes with secure conversions or use dedicated arithmetic units that can process Boolean masked values. Several proposals have been published that can realize these approaches securely and efficiently in software. But to the best of our knowledge, no hardware design exists that fulfills relevant properties such as efficiency and security at the same time. In this paper, we present two design strategies to realize a secure and efficient arithmetic adder for Boolean-masked values. First, we introduce an architecture based on the ripple-carry adder that targets low-cost applications. The second architecture is based on a pipelined KoggeStone adder and targets high-performance applications. In particular, all our implementations adopt the threshold implementation approach to improve their resis...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2015
• Where: ACNS
• Authors: Tobias Schneider, Amir Moradi, Tim Güneysu
• Keywords: ACNS 2015, Cryptology