A 40nm 1.26µ/Op Energy-Efficient CRYSTALS-KYBER Post-Quantum Crypto-Processor with Comprehensive Side Channel Security Analysis and Countermeasures

The migration to post-quantum cryptography (PQC) is accelerating with the release of three drafts of the 2023 PQC federal information processing standard (FIPS), of which Kyber is the only officially selected key encapsulation mechanism (KEM) as Figure 1. However, the migration from traditional cryptography to PQC still faces the following three challenges: 1) The significant increase in key size and encryption/decryption latency leads to performance degradation and resource overhead in existing information devices. Moreover, unauthorized access also raises privacy concerns. 2) More complex calculations and scheduling, as well as potential efficiency issues. 3) The risk of side channel attack (SCA) and the improvement of protection requirements faced by PQC hardware.