Article Details

Abstract

To evaluate the side-channel security of the SMBA block cipher algorithm in physical implementation, this article takes the whitening transformation stage of the algorithm as the attack target and designs and verifies a complete Correlation Power Analysis (CPA) attack scheme. Power consumption traces corresponding to 10 000 random plaintexts are collected during the unprotected physical implementation of the SMBA-128-128 algorithm. By guessing the encryption subkeys, the output of the whitening transformation is mapped to the Hamming weight model to construct the hypothetical power consumption. Finally, the Pearson correlation coefficient between the hypothetical power consumption traces and the real power consumption traces collected during the encryption process is calculated to complete the key identification. The experimental results show that the proposed CPA attack method can successfully recover the sensitive encryption subkeys of the SMBA-128-128 algorithm, proving that the unprotected physical implementation of the algorithm faces significant security risks against side-channel attacks. This provides a key experimental basis for the engineering deployment of side-channel protection for the algorithm.

Keywords

group cipher algorithm; SMBA algorithm; side-channel attack; correlation power analysis

References

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Funding

Guangdong Provincial Department of Education's College Research Project for Young Innovative Talents (2023KQNCX175)

About the authors

Xie Tairong (1994-), male, Han nationality, from Meizhou, Guangdong, teaching assistant, master's degree, research direction: side channel attack, intelligent product development and application.