Lightweight Countermeasure to Differential-Plaintext Attacks on Permutation Ciphers

Abstract

Many lightweight permutation based block ciphers have emerged for the use of encryption and security in the Internet of Things (IoT). However, recent work has shown a critical vulnerability in these ciphers due to the employment of static permutation networks in their architectures; Side-Channel Analysis and Differntial-Plaintext Attack (SCADPA) can be effectively performed on any cipher utilizing permutation networks. In this work, we present a lightweight solution for combating SCADPA. We demonstrate how this countermeasure can be employed on existing ciphers using the lightweight IoT PRESENT-80 cipher, providing multiple architectural implementations, and comparing the performance of these modified architectures against the unaltered PRESENT-80 cipher. Additionally, we analyze how this countermeasure impacts the resilience for all permutation ciphers when considering this attack scheme and provide alternative implementations and possible enhancements.