Authors:
Md Toufiq Hasan Anik
1
;
Hasin Ishraq Reefat
1
;
Mohammad Ebrahimabadi
1
;
Javad Bahrami
1
;
Hossein Pourmehrani
1
;
Jean-Luc Danger
2
;
3
;
Sylvain Guilley
3
;
2
and
Naghmeh Karimi
1
Affiliations:
1
CSEE Department, University of Maryland Baltimore County, Baltimore, U.S.A.
;
2
Secure-IC S.A.S., Technology & Strategy Division, Paris, France
;
3
LTCI, Télécom Paris, Institut Polytechnique de Paris, Palaiseau, France
Keyword(s):
Side-Channel Analysis, Attack Detection, Device Rekeying, Leakage Rate Characterization, Digital Sensor for Information Leakage Estimation, Minimization of the Key Refresh Frequency, TIGER Methodology.
Abstract:
Key refreshing is a pragmatic countermeasure to side-channel attacks, designed to revoke and replace the key promptly when an attack is either anticipated or suspected. This system-level approach rekeys the device under attack and keeps paired devices protected if cryptography secures data in transit. The frequency of key refreshing is critical: too infrequent, and security risks increase; too frequent, and system performance degrades. This frequency is set pre-silicon via threat analysis but may be inefficient as leakage varies with operating conditions. To fill the gap, we introduce a post-silicon strategy for optimal rekeying frequency. Our proposed scheme TIGER deploys a digital sensor to monitor environmental conditions and enabling inference at runtime by pre-characterizing the leakage rate correlated to the digital sensor measurements. The accumulated leakage rate helps deduce a cutoff time for rekeying. We demonstrate the end-to-end feasibility of this approach on an FPGA boa
rd designed for side-channel threat assessment.
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