Questions tagged [side-channel-attack]

attacks using information leaked by implementations of cryptographic algorithms to obtain information about keys or (plaintext) data, instead of (or additional to) using cryptographic weaknesses.

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How to prevent power analysis on software level?

When attacking RSA with Square&Multiply, one can figure out the secret key by looking at the exponentiation algorithm itself. To prevent this in software, we could use dummy multiplications after ...
user109190's user avatar
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Constant-time decompression on an elliptic curve

Let $E\!: y^2 = f(x)$ be an elliptic curve over a finite field $\mathbb{F}_{q}$ of odd characteristic. Consider an $\mathbb{F}_{q}$-point $P = (x,y)$ on $E$. Suppose that we only have the $x$-...
Dimitri Koshelev's user avatar
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Issue with understanding Side Channel Attacks

I am currently working on Side Channel Attacks (SCA) on Kyber and Dilithium. I have found myself quite confused with side channel, because so much is mentionned all the time. For instance, I don't ...
rerouille's user avatar
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Difference between Decryption-failure and Plaintext-checking oracles

I am reading this paper, which in the introduction, tells about two main types of key recovery SCAs : Reaction_type SCAs, which uses a decryption failure oracle Message-recovery-type SCAs, which uses ...
rerouille's user avatar
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Are you aware of cryptographic contexts (e.g., post-quantum) in which a square root $\sqrt{\cdot}$ must be computed in constant time?

Let $\mathbb{F}_q$ be a finite field of odd characteristic. I know that a constant-time implementation of the square root extraction $\sqrt{\cdot} \in \mathbb{F}_q$ is used in the context of hashing ...
Dimitri Koshelev's user avatar
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why sbox input XOR sbox output can be sensitive data of side channel attack?

As several intermediate values are used as sentive data for side channel analysis (DPA), I don't understand why sbox input ^ sbox output is also wide-used and effective. This value does not applied in ...
ramenpeddler's user avatar
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Fan et al. Recovering MSD's

I have been trying to understand the method of recovering the MSD of the nonce proposed by Fan et al. (section 4.2), in their attack targeting wNAF implementation for scalar multiplication in the ...
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Mitigating side-channel attacks: which is better? Masked cryptography or differential power analysis-resistant cryptography?

As part of mitigating side-channel attacks, which is the most efficient? Masked cryptography or differential power analysis-resistant cryptography? Or are they both similar?
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How new cache designs stop cache-based side channel attacks

How do new cache designs aid in defending against cache-based side-channel attacks? While conducting a side-channel attack, we have the T-table/S-virtual box's address. Normally, address mapping is ...
nivedita's user avatar
2 votes
1 answer
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Generic attack on Hmac sha256

Is there any generic attack on HMAC SHA 256 ? I am currently reading up on attacks on Hmac sha-256. However most of the papers I've found are about side channel attacks such as Differential power ...
Donnie's user avatar
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How to get dp and dq of CRT-RSA?

I am learning to utilize flush+reload method to get private key of CRT-RSA. CRT-RSA calculates two parts separately: mp = c^dp mod p and ...
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What do you call a random number that affects the calculation, but not the result?

This is about the same random ladder algorithm as my previous question. It computes f(g,n,r)=n*g or g^n (depending on the group notation), where g is a generator of a group. Suppose n=5882353. This ...
Pierre Abbat's user avatar
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How do I try a timing attack on a public-key implementation on a general-purpose computer?

I'm writing a higher-order function in Haskell for use in public-key algorithms; it works equally well for RSA or elliptic curves. I'd like to test it for susceptibility to side channel attacks. How ...
Pierre Abbat's user avatar
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Are side-channels a concern for AEAD key commitment fixes?

I'm currently debating whether to revert to a non-committing AEAD (ChaCha20-Poly1305) instead of a committing AEAD based on Encrypt-then-MAC (XChaCha20-BLAKE2b) for stream encryption. Borg backup made ...
samuel-lucas6's user avatar
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Constant time empty string validation

Checks for null require an == check. If you have a string secret (say a hex-encoded key) and you want to check it's empty for validation should you compare it to <...
Oliver Riley's user avatar
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Is the elliptic-curve cryptography library libsecp256k1 not susceptible to the Hertzbleed attack?

I was reading up on the recently disclosed Hertzbleed side channel attack(s). It was speculated on Twitter that the elliptic-curve cryptography library libsecp256k1 is not susceptible to these attacks....
Michael Folkson's user avatar
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Can cryptographic accelerators along with side channel attack be used for GPS spoofing?

While having a discussion with someone on a forum about GPS spoofing, he mentioned that GPS signal can be spoofed for a cruising missile and make it land somewhere else using side-channel attack along ...
kioptrix's user avatar
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Correlation Power Analysis on AES - possible attack models

As far as I know it is possible to extract the key or key parts using side channel power analysis attack on AES, but we need some strong attacker model in order to do that. The first attack I know ...
user100099's user avatar
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Pros and cons about padding a cryptogram produced with an "additive" operation mode

These days I found myself thinking about the implications of padding or not padding block cipher modes that act like additive stream ciphers (I meant OFB, CTR, GCM etc). Let's call additive modes. You ...
r s's user avatar
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RSA private key revealing by decrypting c=n-1

In RSA, if we use Square and always Multiply algorithm in decryption, how does decrypting the ciphertext $c=n-1$, while our public key is $(n,e)$, cause the private key $d$ to reveal due to side-...
Mohammadsadeq Borjiyan's user avatar
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Masked RSA/BigInt Arithmetic?

Masking is the process of replacing operations (internally to some cryptographic algorithm) on intermediate values with operations on secret shared values. Then, even if some number of these secret-...
Mark's user avatar
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Is CBC mode of encryption still safe as long as it's not use to send messages over a network?

I'm still reading about the Padding Oracle attack and Side Channel attack that can be performed to decrypt cipher text encrypted with CBC though it's still not clear to me. But base on my little ...
0xdeadbeef's user avatar
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1 answer
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Timing attacks: Symmetric vs Asymmetric Algorithms

There is a statement that I can't give a reference; "Since the timing characteristics of symmetric algorithms are not as key dependent as asymmetric algorithms, they are more resistant against ...
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Is it okay to avoid a plaintext IV in AES?

The scenario Using AES 256 with CBC mode. (Authentication is done separately. Ignored here.) The goal (explained more later) To avoid sending an unencrypted IV. But since this is being done using .NET ...
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What is reaction attack?

In the paper of "Reaction Attacks against Several Public-Key Cryptosystems" CiteSeerX link, reaction attack is defined informally as "Obtaining information about the private key or ...
NB_1907's user avatar
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Post-quantum algorithms and side channel attacks

I am studying finalist algorithms of NIST Post-Quantum Cryptography Standardization. I noticed that almost all third party cryptanalysis papers consist of side-channel attacks. Why are classical ...
NB_1907's user avatar
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2 votes
1 answer
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Threshold implementation of ciphers

What is the principle behind threshold implementation of block ciphers and how is this protecting against side channel attacks?
Evgeni Vaknin's user avatar
3 votes
2 answers
172 views

Protecting AES via Shamir Secret Sharing

This is about the paper Protecting AES with Shamir's Secret Sharing Scheme by Louis Goubin and Ange Martinelli which describes how to use Shamir Secret Sharing to obtain masked implementations of AES. ...
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How is the Argon2d side channel attack performed?

How should the adversary behave in order to perform a successful side channel attack against Argon2d? I'm trying to understand the scenario that Argon2i tries to resist against.
caveman's user avatar
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What are the security implications of RSA decryption of ciphertext >= modulus?

While reading through the sections about decryption in PKCS#1 v2.2, I noticed that the decryption algorithms are required to output the failure symbol: ...
DannyNiu's user avatar
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Randomization of ECDSA signing operations to prevent SCA

A large number of SCA papers that talk about ECDSA mention the need for blinding/randomisation of the signing process, typically with a single-sentence comment about replacing the projective ...
Dave's user avatar
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1 answer
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How feasible is it to guess the private key of libsodium by taking into account generation time?

So suppose you are doing this locally (so no network noise), and know the exact specifics of your processor too. Is it feasible to figure out the private key (while having access to the public-key) ...
Hormoz's user avatar
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2 votes
1 answer
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Role of AND operation in Side Channel Security

I was going through a side channel protection. It seems in the 3-shares (Appendix A) or 4-shares (Appendix B) has some computations that grows with the number of AND operations. My question: Is there ...
hola's user avatar
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Could affine transformation mod 2^128 be a side-channel attack problem

DFC cipher uses affine transformations mod $2^{64}+13$. Soon after DFC's publication, Ian Harvey raised the concern that reduction modulo a 65-bit number was beyond the native capabilities of most ...
Tom's user avatar
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Why does Montgomery Ladder not work for Brainpool curves

According to SafeCurves, the Brainpool curves mentioned there (P256t1 and P384t1) do not support the Montgomery Ladder for scalar multiplication in constant time. I am wondering why this is the case ...
mat's user avatar
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2 votes
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Does Argon2id provide less protection against side-channel attacks than Argon2i theoretically and/or practically? [duplicate]

LUKS 2 encryption uses Argon2i as the default PBKDF. As the key is used on each access, I guess side-channel attacks are a significant threat factor. However, as I'm not a cryptographer, I am not ...
Lyubomir's user avatar
2 votes
1 answer
136 views

How to express difficulty of breaking crypto when writing?

When writing for both technical and non-technical readers I find my self naturally wanting to write things such as : "..therefore it would be impossible to decrypt the data." When trying ...
rlon134's user avatar
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1 answer
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Are side-channels possible in KDFs

Are KDFs such as PKDF2 and HKDF vulnerable to side-channel attacks such as static and dynamic power analysis including the hash type used internally?
maig's user avatar
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1 answer
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What is the Lord of the Ring(s): Side Channel Attack and What are the results

A recent Paper to appear on USENIX Security 2021 titled as Lord of the Ring(s): Side Channel Attacks on the CPU On-Chip Ring Interconnect Are Practical by Riccardo Paccagnella Licheng Luo Christopher ...
kelalaka's user avatar
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Is this constant-time comparison secure?

I was thinking about constant-time comparison and how it differs from "==", when I thought of a simple way that's could be constant-time. Being a beginner in cryptography, I'd like to know ...
Evan Su's user avatar
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4 votes
0 answers
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secp256k1 scalar decomposing and prime field arithmetic

I'm currently studying the elliptic curve secp256k1 implementation. In my understanding, it has efficiently computable endomorphisms: We can find out a pair of number $\lambda$ and $\beta$ from the ...
luke's user avatar
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2 votes
0 answers
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Is this "AND" implementation safe against side channel attacks?

I found out that the following is a working implementation of calculating an AND function between XOR masked shares, implementation at Github. It works by calculating parities, whose terms cancel each ...
Balazs F's user avatar
4 votes
2 answers
1k views

Side-Channel Attacks in the Cloud

Let's say we have some very sensitive personal files. At all costs, we do not want any other pair of eyeballs to gaze upon them. We need these sensitive files to be secure and available. So, we have ...
Patriot's user avatar
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Dragonfly masked DH

I was looking at Dragonfly key exchange protocol RFC 7664, and it seems to make use of masked Diffie-Hellman in the final part. Generating two random numbers less than group order $q$, $m$, and $r$ ...
Manish Adhikari's user avatar
2 votes
1 answer
141 views

Constant Time algorithms for $\mathbb{Z}/m\mathbb{Z}$, $\mathbb{Z}/m\mathbb{Z}[x]$, and $\mathbb{Z}/m\mathbb{Z}[x] / (f(x))$?

I want to implement some (lattice based) protocols to better familiarize myself with a programming language (Rust). These tend to do arithmetic over rings like $\mathbb{Z}/m\mathbb{Z}$, or "...
Mark's user avatar
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10 votes
2 answers
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What is a "constant time" work around when dealing with the point at infinity for prime curves?

I've been working for some time, on designing a constant time solution for dealing with the "point at infinity" for prime curves. So, far I'm using the Standard Projective Coordinates for ...
Vivekanand V's user avatar
3 votes
0 answers
125 views

Constant time arithmetic implementation in DSA

I am trying to understand why it is a hard problem to have formally verified constant time arithmetic for DSA when compared with ECDSA. For instance, in ECDSA implementations of OpenSSL, we have ...
sohu's user avatar
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Hashing of variable-length chunked data leading to leakage of secret key from side channel?

Hypothetically, secret data could be hashed in some schemes in one way or another. Could chunking of the data lead to exposure of secret component through side channel? Say converting a randomized ...
DannyNiu's user avatar
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2 votes
1 answer
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Why shouldn't cryptocurrency hash algorythms, resist side channel attack?

2015's Argon2 publication suggests that cryptocurrency hashing like password hashing on backend servers should not be subject to side-channel attack: Argon2d is optimized for settings where the ...
user1767316's user avatar
1 vote
2 answers
110 views

Side channel attack - execution time depends on the size of the key

In my algorith execution time depends on the size of the key. It is a linear relationship (probably). The larger the key, the longer the algorithm takes to run. I have a code in Python so far. For ...
Tom's user avatar
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