Side-Channel Secure Designs and Implementations of Cryptographic Algorithms in Embedded Systems

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The widespread deployment of embedded systems and the Internet of Things (IoT), in our homes, cars, workplaces, manufacturing lines, hospitals, and power plants rely critically on their secure operation. Although the underlying mathematical foundations of the popular cryptographic algorithms are sound and well-understood, their actual realizations as cryptographic chips are not secure. Recent research has shown that the typical implementations of cryptographic algorithms can leak sensitive information through several side and covert channels. These channels include variations in the power consumption, electromagnetic radiation, execution time, photonic emissions, acoustic waves, response to induced faults, along with others. This group of attacks is called Implementation Attacks, where the adversary exploits weaknesses in the underlying implementation of a cryptographic algorithm rather than its mathematical structure. Implementation Attacks can be passive (known as Side-Channel Analysis) or active (known as Fault Attacks). The proposed research program seeks a deeper and more quantified understanding of side channel analysis and implementation attacks against critical embedded and IoT systems and proposes novel design methodologies and robust implementations that are secured against these attacks without violating usability, cost or real-time constraints. The objectives of this program include: 1- Building a fair, uniform and standardized evaluation platform for the analysis and quantification of information leakage in the cryptographic chips of embedded and IoT systems. This evaluation platform is essential not only to the security assessment of the new designs and implementations to be proposed in this research program, but also to analyze cryptographic chips used by government services and the industry. 2- Proposing new, more efficient, implementations of the currently used standard cryptographic algorithms. This is an ongoing research topic, where all the current implementations, both in hardware and software, are being rebuilt to incorporate security against implementation attacks. 3- Developing secure implementations for the new Quantum Resistant Cryptography (QRC), also called Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC), as a research goal of the Government of Canada. Currently, there are 26 new PQC algorithms that are being evaluated, each with several target security levels. These algorithms need to be analyzed within the framework of implementation attacks, and secure implementations need to be proposed. 4- Proposing novel design methodologies toward having new cryptographic algorithms that are side-channel-aware. In this research objective, we will propose tools to prevent information leakage in the design phase of new algorithms, rather than addressing the problem as an aftermath. This research program is multidisciplinary as it overlaps between science and engineering fields.