Lightweight Countermeasures Against Static Power Side-Channel Attacks

Abstract: This paper presents a novel defense strategy against static power side-channel attacks (PSCAs), a critical threat to cryptographic security. Our method is based on (1) carefully tuning high-Vth versus low-Vth cell selection during synthesis, accounting for both security and timing impact, and (2), at runtime, randomly switching the operation between these cells. This approach serves to significantly obscure static power patterns, which are at the heart of static PSCAs. Our experimental results on a commercial 28nm node show a drastic increase in the effort required for a successful attack, namely up to 96 times more traces. When compared to prior countermeasures, ours incurs little cost, making it a lightweight defense.