Experimental evaluation of differential fault attack on lightweight block cipher PIPO

Abstract

Abstract The recent development of Internet of Things (IoT) devices has increased related security issues. Because of the rapid increase in the use of these devices, the possibility of accessing and hijacking cryptographic devices is increasing. Consequently, active research on cryptographic technologies capable of providing a safe environment even in resource‐constrained environments has been undertaken. As a result of their physical accessibility, devices are becoming more vulnerable to Side‐channel analysis (SCA) security issues. To address these issues, PIPO, a lightweight block cipher, was recently proposed in ICISC 2020. The PIPO has the characteristic of providing robust security strength while having less overhead when using the SCA countermeasures. A Differential fault attack (DFA) is a type of SCA that induces fault in cryptographic operations and utilises difference information that occurs. Differential fault attacks on the PIPO have not yet been studied. For the first time, this study proposed a single‐bit flip‐based DFA on the PIPO. Through 64 fault ciphertexts, the proposed attack has a 98.8% probability of recovering the correct secret key of PIPO 64/128. We evaluated the proposed attack not only through simulation but also through electromagnetic fault injection (FI). Hereinafter, we were able to confirm that our attack is capable of being applied to real world devices. Therefore, the PIPO without FI countermeasure provides no security against differential fault attacks. When using the PIPO cipher on IoT devices, designers must use appropriate countermeasures against FI attacks.