Techniques to enhance the resistance of precharged busses to differential power analysis

In this communication, different techniques to improve the resistance to Differential Power Analysis (DPA) attacks of precharged busses are discussed. These statistical attacks rely on the observation of the power consumption, and are very effective in recovering confidential information that are stored or processed in SmartCards running cryptographic algorithms. Accordingly, a few techniques to improve the information security by reducing the effectiveness of DPA attacks are discussed. These techniques are statistically analyzed and compared in terms of DPA resistance, power and area overhead. Finally, these techniques are mixed to improve the robustness to DPA attacks. Cycle-accurate simulations on DES encryption algorithm running on a MIPS32® architecture are used to validate the discussed techniques.