Search

This survey is on forward-looking, emerging security concerns in post-quantum era, i.e., the implementation attacks for 2022 winners of NIST post-quantum cryptography (PQC) competition and thus the visions, insights, and discussions can be used as a step forward towards scrutinizing the new standards for applications ranging from Metaverse, Web 3.0 to deeply-embedded systems. The rapid advances in quantum computing have brought immense opportunities for scientific discovery and technological progress; however, it poses a major risk to today's security since advanced quantum computers are believed to break all traditional public-key cryptographic algorithms. This has led to active research on PQC algorithms that are believed to be secure against classical and powerful quantum computers. However, algorithmic security is unfortunately insufficient, and many cryptographic algorithms are vulnerable to side-channel attacks (SCA), where an attacker passively or actively gets side-channel data to compromise the security properties that are assumed to be safe theoretically. In this survey, we explore such imminent threats and their countermeasures with respect to PQC. We provide the respective, latest advancements in PQC research, as well as assessments and providing visions on the different types of SCAs.

This survey is the first work on the current standard for lightweight cryptography, standardized in 2023 and used for security of embedded systems. Security issues as well as implementations and side-channel attacks for this lightweight standard by NIST is discussed.

Binary extension finite fields ${\mathrm{ GF}}(2^{m})$ have received prominent attention in the literature due to their application in many modern public-key cryptosystems and error-correcting codes. In particular, the inversion over ${\mathrm{ GF}}(2^{m})$ is crucial for current and postquantum cryptographic applications. Schemes such as Fermat’s little theorem (FLT) and the Itoh–Tsujii algorithm (ITA) have been studied to achieve better performance; however, this arithmetic operation is a complex, expensive, and time-consuming task that may require thousands of gates, increasing its vulnerability chance to natural defects. In this work, we propose efficient hardware architectures based on cyclic redundancy check (CRC) as error detection schemes for state-of-the-art finite field inversion over ${\mathrm{ GF}}(2^{m})$ for a polynomial basis. To verify the derivations of the formulations, software implementations are performed. Likewise, hardware implementations of the original finite field inversions with the proposed error detection schemes are performed over Xilinx field-programmable gate array (FPGA) verifying that the proposed schemes achieve high error coverage with acceptable overhead.

Code-based cryptography based on binary Goppa codes is a promising solution for thwarting attacks based on quantum computers. The McEliece cryptosystem is a code-based public-key cryptosystem which is believed to be resistant against quantum attacks. In fact, it is successfully advanced to the second round of the post-quantum cryptography standardization competition early 2019. Due to its very large key size, different variants of binary Goppa codes have been proposed. Nevertheless, research has shown that such codes can be thwarted through the injection of faults, causing erroneous outputs. In this work, we present countermeasures for the implementation of different composite field arithmetic units used in the McEliece cryptosystem. The proposed architectures use overhead-aware and tailored signatures. We apply these error detection signatures to the McEliece cryptosystem and perform field-programmable gate array (FPGA) implementations to show the feasibility of adopting the proposed schemes. We benchmark the overhead and performance degradation of the proposed approaches and show their suitability for constrained embedded systems.

Finite-field multiplication has received prominent attention in the literature with applications in cryptography and error-detecting codes. For many cryptographic algorithms, this arithmetic operation is a complex, costly, and time-consuming task that may require millions of gates. In this work, we propose efficient hardware architectures based on cyclic redundancy check (CRC) as error-detection schemes for postquantum cryptography (PQC) with case studies for the Luov cryptographic algorithm. Luov was submitted for the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) PQC standardization competition and was advanced to the second round. The CRC polynomials selected are in-line with the required error-detection capabilities and with the field sizes as well. We have developed verification codes through which software implementations of the proposed schemes are performed to verify the derivations of the formulations. Additionally, hardware implementations of the original multipliers with the proposed error-detection schemes are performed over a Xilinx field-programmable gate array (FPGA), verifying that the proposed schemes achieve high error coverage with acceptable overhead.