On comparing side-channel properties of AES and ChaCha20 on microcontrollers

• Main Authors: Najm, Zakaria, Jap, Dirmanto, Jungk, Bernhard, Picek, Stjepan, Bhasin, Shivam
• Other Authors: 2018 IEEE Asia Pacific Conference on Circuits and Systems (APCCAS)
• Format: Conference or Workshop Item
• Language: English
• Published: 2019
• Subjects: Side-Channel Attacks; Machine Learning; Engineering::Electrical and electronic engineering
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/104628; http://hdl.handle.net/10220/49349
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Side-channel attacks are a real threat to many secure systems. In this paper, we consider two ciphers used in the automotive industry - AES and ChaCha20 and we evaluate their resistance against side-channel attacks. In particular, the focus is laid upon the main non-linear component in these ciphers. Owing to the design of ChaCha20, it offers natural timing side-channel resistance and thus is suitable for affected applications. However, attacks exploiting the power side-channel are somewhat more difficult on ChaCha20 as compared to AES, but the overhead to protect ChaCha20 against such attack is considerably higher.