Power Side-Channel Attacks on Crypto-Core Based on RISC-V ISA for High-Security Applications

With the advancement of IoT edge devices, the threat to sensitive data processed at these devices is increasing. This research aims to enhance processor’s built-in resilience against power analysis attacks (PAA) by expanding pipeline stages, employing diverse pipeline techniques, and integrating additional features. The paper proposes 32-bit RISC-V core micro-architectures with inbuilt cryptographic capabilities, extending the RISC-V ISA with custom AES instructions to reduce energy consumption, code size, and encryption time compared to software AES solutions. An area-efficient 128-bit, 12-clock AES based on the Masoleh S-box is integrated into the RISC-V core, resulting in low area and power overheads. Two cores are presented: Core1, a 3-stage pipelined core with a software pause, and Core2, a 4-stage pipelined core with a hardware pause for securing data with AES instructions. Despite their vulnerabilities, the integration of AES with RISC-V architecture significantly improves their intrinsic resilience against PAA. This work analyses the vulnerability and improvement in intrinsic resilience of these cores to side-channel attacks, the impact of hardware versus software pause and the effect of pipeline stages on security metrics. The proposed designs are validated on a Xilinx Basys3 FPGA and developed in UMC 65 nm technology node. Power traces generated during AES encryption are extracted using Synopsys PrimeTime PX and analyzed with a MATLAB power attack model to successfully recover all key bytes. Core1 and Core2 achieved higher throughput of
$2.02\times $
and
$2.83\times $
, respectively, than the Arm CryptoCell312. Core2’s added circuits for hardware pause and increased number of pipeline stages significantly boost performance and enhance security against power attacks, with only a modest increase in area and power consumption.