Does It Sound as It Claims: A Detailed Side-Channel Security Analysis of QuadSeal Countermeasure

VLSI systems often rely on embedded cryptographic cores for security when the confidentiality and authorization is a must. Such cores are theoretically sound but often vulnerable to physical attacks like side-channel analysis (SCA). Several countermeasures have been previously proposed to protect these cryptographic cores. QuadSeal was proposed as an algorithmic balancing technique to thwart power analysis attacks on block cipher algorithms. QuadSeal can be implemented either in hardware or software and it was previously shown on Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) (referred as QuadSeal-AES) to be resistant against power analysis attacks (Correlation Power Analsis and Mutual Information Analysis). In this paper, we analyze QuadSeal against SCA (against power analysis attacks) using leakage detection techniques as well as Correlation Power Analysis with success rates. Our results show that QuadSeal has leakages; however CPA with success rate attack was unable to exploit the leakages efficiently.