Energy-efficient data scrambling on memory-processor interfaces

L Benini, A Galati, A Macii, E Macii… - Proceedings of the 2003 …, 2003 - dl.acm.org
Proceedings of the 2003 international symposium on Low power electronics and …, 2003dl.acm.org
Crypto-processors are prone to security attacks based on the observation of their power
consumption profile. We propose new techniques for increasing the non-determinism of
such profile, which rely on the idea of introducing randomness in the bus data transfers. This
is achieved by combining data scrambling with energy-efficient bus encoding, thus providing
high information protection at no energy cost. Results on a set of bus traces originated by
real-life applications demonstrate the applicability of the proposed solution.
Crypto-processors are prone to security attacks based on the observation of their power consumption profile. We propose new techniques for increasing the non-determinism of such profile, which rely on the idea of introducing randomness in the bus data transfers. This is achieved by combining data scrambling with energy-efficient bus encoding, thus providing high information protection at no energy cost.Results on a set of bus traces originated by real-life applications demonstrate the applicability of the proposed solution.
ACM Digital Library