Location Distribution as a Side Channel Countermeasure

In this paper, location distribution is proposed as a novel cryptographic side channel countermeasure that is scalable and algorithm agnostic. Location distribution utilizes the unallocated resources of an FPGA to instantiate multiple instances of an encryption core. We suspect that this will offer a significant increase in the number of traces required to successfully perform an EM side channel attack. A three-part methodology is also presented that will be used to test the countermeasure in the future. All three tests will be measuring the number of traces required to perform a successful differential power analysis and differential EM analysis attack. The first test compares a traditional single encryption core system vs. a distributed three core system of AES-128 to test the validity of the proposed side channel countermeasure. The second test will be plotting the number of traces required to perform a successful power analysis and EM analysis attack as the number of encryption cores increases from one to five to evaluate how the countermeasure scales. The final test will repeat the first test except using RSA, ECC, and SHA-3 to compare against the regression found in part two to test if the countermeasure is algorithm agnostic.