An Enhanced Two-Step CPA Side-Channel Analysis Attack on ML-KEM

Mark Kennaway, Tuan Hoang, Ayesha Khalid, Ciara Rafferty, Máire O’Neill

2025

Abstract

This work presents an enhanced two-step Correlation Power Analysis (CPA) attack targeting the recently standardised ML-KEM on an ARM Cortex M4. Our enhancement exploits the knowledge of intermittent variables to identify sample points of interest and develop bespoke attack functions. Step one targets the odd coefficients of each Secret Key Polynomial Vector ( ˆs), before step two targets the remaining even coefficients using more elaborate attack functions. After successfully demonstrating key recovery for the first set of ˆs, we then characterise leakage behaviour, revealing a trend indicating recovery of each coefficient becomes more efficient with subsequent iterations of the internal doublebasemul operation. By applying our enhanced twostep attack methodology, we successfully recovered the entire key using only 179 traces, without the need for elaborate preconditions or ciphertext manipulations. We obtain remarkable results in the initial stage of our attack, while the second phase achieves performance comparable to other recent studies.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Kennaway M., Hoang T., Khalid A., Rafferty C. and O’Neill M. (2025). An Enhanced Two-Step CPA Side-Channel Analysis Attack on ML-KEM. In Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Security and Cryptography - Volume 1: SECRYPT; ISBN 978-989-758-760-3, SciTePress, pages 263-274. DOI: 10.5220/0013638600003979

in Bibtex Style

@conference{secrypt25,
author={Mark Kennaway and Tuan Hoang and Ayesha Khalid and Ciara Rafferty and Máire O’Neill},
title={An Enhanced Two-Step CPA Side-Channel Analysis Attack on ML-KEM},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Security and Cryptography - Volume 1: SECRYPT},
year={2025},
pages={263-274},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0013638600003979},
isbn={978-989-758-760-3},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Security and Cryptography - Volume 1: SECRYPT
TI - An Enhanced Two-Step CPA Side-Channel Analysis Attack on ML-KEM
SN - 978-989-758-760-3
AU - Kennaway M.
AU - Hoang T.
AU - Khalid A.
AU - Rafferty C.
AU - O’Neill M.
PY - 2025
SP - 263
EP - 274
DO - 10.5220/0013638600003979
PB - SciTePress