NIST's Non-Invasive Attack Workshop: Day 1

Luke Mather and I have been attending NIST's Non-Invasive Attack Workshop in Nara Japan. The major it of the presentations have been to do with the metrics and methods of evaluating secure implementations of cryptographic algorithms in microprocessors.

The discussion following a presentation on secure implementations of cryptographic algorithms on FPGAs was of particular interest. In response to the presentation Brad Hutchings from Brigham Young University, Utah pointed out that his team have developed a tool to control the routing on an FPGA. When implementing secure logic styles on an FPGS it is difficult to make sure that connections that are reproduced the same length (to ensure the power consumption is the same). Their tool provides a Java interface for imposing constraints on Xilinx designs. This is a source forge project called rapid smith.