Maria Eichlseder

Graz University of Technology

Title:

SIFA Exploiting Ineffective Fault Inductions on Symmetric Cryptography

Abstract:

We will discuss Statistical Ineffective Fault Attacks (SIFA) and several recently proposed countermeasures against this new approach. While classical differential fault attacks rely on observing the incorrect output of a faulted cipher computation and can thus be prevented by correctness checks, SIFA and other Ineffective Fault attacks need only correct outputs where the fault had no effect. For this reason, SIFA can even be applied successfully to implementations protected by classical fault countermeasures as well as side-channel countermeasures. New mechanisms are thus needed to prevent this threat, and several proposals have been made recently. We will analyze why and when SIFA works, what its links with cryptanalysis are, and how these countermeasures try to prevent it.

Biography:

Maria Eichlseder is assistant professor in Cryptography at GrazUniversity of Technology. She co-designed Ascon, a lightweight authenticated cipher that is among the winners of the CAESAR competition. Her research interests include the design and cryptanalysis of symmetric cryptographic algorithms, such as hash functions and authenticated encryption algorithms and their underlying primitives. She is also interested in their robustness against misuse and implementation attacks, and connections between cryptanalysis and physical attacks such as fault attacks. She studied Computer Science and Technical Mathematics at Graz University of Technology and defended her Ph.D. sub auspiciispraesidentis in 2018.