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arXiv · 2510.04640

Backing the Wrong Horse: How Bit-Level Netlist Augmentation can Counter Power Side Channel Attacks

Ali Asghar·Andreas Becher·Daniel Ziener
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Abstract

The dependence of power-consumption on the processed data is a known vulnerability of CMOS circuits, resulting in side channels which can be exploited by power-based side channel attacks (SCAs). These attacks can extract sensitive information, such as secret keys, from the implementation of cryptographic algorithms. Existing countermeasures against power-based side channel attacks focus on analyzing information leakage at the byte level. However, this approach neglects the impact of individual bits on the overall resistance of a cryptographic implementation. In this work, we present a countermeasure based on single-bit leakage. The results suggest that the proposed countermeasure cannot be broken by attacks using conventional SCA leakage models.

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Ali Asghar, Andreas Becher, Daniel Ziener. 2025-10-06. Backing the Wrong Horse: How Bit-Level Netlist Augmentation can Counter Power Side Channel Attacks. https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.04640

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