Paper 2009/473 Original: eprint.iacr.org/2009/473 ↗
A Simple Power Analysis Attack on the Serpent Key Schedule
Abstract
We describe an SPA attack on an 8-bit smart card implementation of the Serpent block cipher. Our attack uses measurements taken during an on-the-fly key expansion together with linearity in the cipher's key schedule algorithm to drastically reduce the search time for an initial key. An implementation finds 256-bit keys in 3.736 ms on average. Our work shows that linearity in key schedule design and other cryptographic applications should be carefully evaluated for susceptibility to side-channel attacks and that search algorithm design can greatly speed up side-channel attacks.
Metadata
- Available format(s)
PDF- Category
- Secret-key cryptography
- Publication info
- Preprint.
- History
- 2009-09-26: last updated
- 2009-09-26: published
- Short URL
- https://ia.cr/2009/473
- License
- https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
BibTeX
@misc{cryptoeprint:2009/473,
author = {Kevin J. Compton and Brian Timm and Joel VanLaven},
title = {A Simple Power Analysis Attack on the Serpent Key Schedule},
howpublished = {Cryptology {ePrint} Archive, Paper 2009/473},
year = {2009},
url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2009/473}
}