On Random Dynamic Voltage Scaling for Internet-of-Things: A Game-Theoretic Approach

Security is one of the top considerations in hardware designs for Internet-of-Things (IoT), where embedded cryptosystems are extensively used. Traditionally, random dynamic voltage scaling technology has been shown to be very effective in improving the resistance of cryptosystems against side-channel attacks. However, in this paper we demonstrate that the resistance can be undermined by providing lower off-chip power supply voltage. In order to address this issue, we then further propose to monitor the off-chip power supply voltage, and trigger an alarm to protect valued information once the power supply voltage is lower than the expected voltage (threshold voltage). However, considering both maintenance cost of IoT devices and the environment noise on power supply voltage, we first formulated this problem as a nonzero sum game model, and the attacker and the circuit supplier (defender) are the players of this game. The analysis of the Nash equilibria in this game show interesting guideline to the defender about the choice of threshold voltage, which is based on parameters of cryptosystem including the value of information, denial-of-service cost in IoT, etc.