CRII: SaTC: Secure Instruction Set Extensions for Lattice-Based Post-Quantum Cryptosystems

Aydin Aysu

Project runs from 02/15/2019 to 01/31/2021
$174,751

The emergence of quantum computers poses a serious threat for existing cryptographic systems and necessitates deploying new encryption schemes relying on different mathematical principles to protect electronic devices in the post-quantum era of computing. While theoretical security of these systems are being thoroughly analyzed, attacks on their practical implementations are largely unexplored. The primary research goal of this project is to develop secure implementations for lattice-based cryptosystems—a major class of post-quantum encryption proposals. This work specifically addresses power and electromagnetic side-channel vulnerabilities on physical implementations of lattice-based cryptosystems that can extract secret information by observing its correlation to these computation effects.

To advance the understanding of secure lattice-based cryptosystem implementations, this project proposes a framework that uses instruction set extensions (ISEs) that is designed to mitigate power and EM side-channels and integrated into a customized processor which can map security-critical computations to the ISE. As a result, lattice encryption software can be composed from a set of secure hardware operations and the proposed framework can therefore be automated to secure and benchmark different lattice-based post-quantum proposals. The project will disseminate publications, open-source hardware and software, and it is targeted to bridge the computer architecture and hardware security research communities. This work will also help the ongoing post-quantum standardization effort in US.