English

A VLSI Design Flow for Secure Side-Channel Attack Resistant ICs

Hardware Architecture 2011-11-09 v1

Abstract

This paper presents a digital VLSI design flow to create secure, side-channel attack (SCA) resistant integrated circuits. The design flow starts from a normal design in a hardware description language such as VHDL or Verilog and provides a direct path to a SCA resistant layout. Instead of a full custom layout or an iterative design process with extensive simulations, a few key modifications are incorporated in a regular synchronous CMOS standard cell design flow. We discuss the basis for side-channel attack resistance and adjust the library databases and constraints files of the synthesis and place & route procedures accordingly. Experimental results show that a DPA attack on a regular single ended CMOS standard cell implementation of a module of the DES algorithm discloses the secret key after 200 measurements. The same attack on a secure version still does not disclose the secret key after more than 2000 measurements.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0710.4806,
  title  = {A VLSI Design Flow for Secure Side-Channel Attack Resistant ICs},
  author = {Kris Tiri and Ingrid Verbauwhede},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0710.4806},
  year   = {2011}
}

Comments

Submitted on behalf of EDAA (http://www.edaa.com/)

R2 v1 2026-06-21T09:36:17.679Z