Automated Masking of Software Implementations on Industrial Microcontrollers

Volume
2021-February
Start Page
1006
End Page
1011
Article Number
9474183
Citation
Design, Automation and Test in Europe Conference and Exhibition (DATE 2021)
Contribution to Conference
Design, Automation and Test in Europe Conference and Exhibition, DATE 2021  
Publisher DOI
10.23919/DATE51398.2021.9474183
Scopus ID
2-s2.0-85111002099
Physical side-channel attacks threaten the security of exposed embedded devices, such as microcontrollers. Dedicated countermeasures, like masking, are necessary to prevent these powerful attacks. However, a gap between well-studied leakage models and observed leakage on real devices makes the application of these countermeasures non-trivial. This work provides a gadget-based concept to automated masking covering practically relevant leakage models to achieve security on real-world devices. We realize this concept with a fully automated compiler that transforms unprotected microcontroller-implementations of cryptographic primitives into masked executables, capable of being executed on the target device. In a case study, we apply our approach to a bitsliced LED implementation and perform a TVLA-based security evaluation of its core component: the PRESENT s-box.