Security Issues in QCA Circuit Design - Power Analysis Attacks - Field-Coupled Nanocomputing: Paradigms, Progress, and Perspectives - page 192

Security Issues in QCA Circuit Design - Power
Analysis Attacks

B

) , Saket Srivastava 2 ,
Maire O'Neill 3 , and Earl E. Swartzlander Jr. 4

Weiqiang Liu 1(

1 College of Electronic and Information Engineering, Nanjing University of
Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing 210016, China
[e-mail]
2 School of Engineering, University of Lincoln, Lincoln LN6 7TS, UK
[e-mail]
3 ECIT, Queen's University Belfast, Belfast BT3 9DT, UK
[e-mail]
4 Department of ECE, University of Texas at Austin,
Austin 78712, USA
[e-mail]

Abstract. Quantum-dot cellular automata (QCA) technology has
advantages of fast computation performance, high density and low power
consumption. Thus, it is believed that QCA is attractive for design-
ing future digital systems. Side channel attacks including power analysis
attacks have become a significant threat to the security of cryptographic
circuits using CMOS technology. A power analysis attack can reveal the
secret key of a cryptographic cipher by measuring the power consump-
tion of the cipher's hardware platform while it is encrypting or decrypting
data. As the power consumption of QCA circuits is extremely low when
compared to their CMOS counterparts, it may be possible to build cryp-
tographic circuits that are immune to power analysis attacks by using
QCA technology. Therefore, in this chapter an investigation into both
the best and worst case scenarios for attackers is carried out to ascertain
if QCA circuits have such an advantage. A more ecient QCA design
of a sub-module of the Serpent cipher is proposed and compared to a
previous design. By using an upper bound power model, the first power
analysis attack of a QCA cryptographic circuit (Serpent sub-module) is
presented. The results show that in the best case scenario for attack-
ers, QCA cryptographic circuits would be vulnerable to power analysis
attack. However, the security of practical QCA circuits can be greatly
improved by applying a smoother clock. Moreover, in the worst case sce-
nario, reversible QCA circuits with Bennett clocking could be used as a
natural countermeasure to power analysis attack. Therefore, it is believed
that QCA could be a niche technology in the future for the implementa-
tion of security architectures resistant to power analysis attack.

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Keywords: Quantum-dot Cellular Automata (QCA) QCA power

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models Power analysis attack Cryptography Serpent cipher S-box

Security architectures