Single Trace Analysis on Constant Time CDT Sampler and Its Countermeasure

• Main Authors: Suhri Kim, Seokhie Hong
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2018-10-01
• Series: Applied Sciences
• Subjects: post-quantum cryptography; lattice-based cryptography; Gaussian sampling; CDT sampling; side-channel attack; single trace analysis
• Online Access: http://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/8/10/1809

The Gaussian sampler is an integral part in lattice-based cryptography as it has a direct connection to security and efficiency. Although it is theoretically secure to use the Gaussian sampler, the security of its implementation is an open issue. Therefore, researchers have started to investigate the security of the Gaussian sampler against side-channel attacks. Since the performance of the Gaussian sampler directly affects the performance of the overall cryptosystem, countermeasures considering only timing attacks are applied in the literature. In this paper, we propose the first single trace power analysis attack on a constant-time cumulative distribution table (CDT) sampler used in lattice-based cryptosystems. From our analysis, we were able to recover every sampled value in the key generation stage, so that the secret key is recovered by the Gaussian elimination. By applying our attack to the candidates submitted to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), we were able to recover over 99% of the secret keys. Additionally, we propose a countermeasure based on a look-up table. To validate the efficiency of our countermeasure, we implemented it in Lizard and measure its performance. We demonstrated that the proposed countermeasure does not degrade the performance.