Paper 2003/010 Original: eprint.iacr.org/2003/010 ↗
Differential Fault Analysis on A.E.S.
Abstract
This paper investigates Differential Fault Analysis (DFA) on the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). Following the Bellcore fault model [2], we assume the injection of a single-byte error during the final rounds of encryption. We show how such faults propagate through AES transformations and demonstrate that the last round key can be derived with only a small number of faulty ciphertexts. From this information, the original cipher key can be efficiently reconstructed. Numerical simulations confirm the practicality of the attack, requiring fewer than ten faulty outputs to recover a complete subkey. Our results highlight the vulnerability of AES implementations in tamper-resistant devices, such as smart cards, when exposed to fault injections. These findings emphasize the importance of incorporating robust error-detection and fault-resilient countermeasures in secure hardware.
Metadata
- Available format(s)
PDF- Category
- Secret-key cryptography
- Publication info
- Preprint.
- History
- 2025-08-19: last updated
- 2003-01-20: published
- Short URL
- https://ia.cr/2003/010
- License
- https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
BibTeX
@misc{cryptoeprint:2003/010,
author = {O. Vivolo and P. Dusart and G. Letourneux},
title = {Differential Fault Analysis on A.E.S.},
howpublished = {Cryptology {ePrint} Archive, Paper 2003/010},
year = {2003},
url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2003/010}
}