A Deep Analysis of two Glitch-Free Hardware Masking Schemes SESYM and LMDPL

Abstract

In the context of masking, which is the dominant technique for protecting cryptographic hardware designs against Side-Channel Analysis (SCA) attacks, the focus has long been on the design of masking schemes that guarantee provable security in the presence of glitches. Unfortunately, achieving this comes at the cost of increased latency, since registers are required to stop glitch propagation. Previous work has attempted to reduce latency by eliminating registers, but the exponential increase in area makes such approaches impractical. Some relatively new attempts have used Dual-Rail Pre-charge (DRP) logic styles to avoid glitches in algorithmically masked circuits. Promising approaches in this area include LUT-based Masked Dual-Rail with Pre-charge Logic (LMDPL) and Self-Synchronized Masking (SESYM), presented at CHES 2020 and CHES 2022 respectively. Both schemes allow masking of arbitrary functions with only one cycle latency. However, even if glitches no longer occur, there are other physical defaults that may violate the security of a glitch-free masked circuit. The imbalanced delay of dual rails is a known security problem for DRP logic styles such as Wave Dynamic Differential Logic (WDDL), but is not covered by the known security models, e.g., robust probing model.
In this work, we illustrate that imbalanced signal delays pose a threat to the security of algorithmically masked circuits implemented with DRP logic, both in theory and practice. Notably, we underscore the security of LMDPL even when delays are taken into account, contrasting with the vulnerability observed in SESYM under similar conditions. Consequently, our findings highlight the critical importance of addressing imbalanced delays in the design of masked circuits using DRP logic. In particular, our findings motivate the need for an appropriate security model, and imply that relying solely on the probing security model and avoiding glitches may be insufficient to construct secure circuits.