An Instruction Set Extension to Support Software-Based Masking

In both hardware and software, masking can represent an effective means of hardening implementation against side-channel attack vectors such as Differential Power Analysis (DPA). Focusing on however, the use present various challenges: specifically, it often 1) requires significant effort to translate any theoretical security properties into practice, and, even then, 2) imposes a overhead in terms efficiency. To address challenges, this paper explores Instruction Set Extension (ISE) support software-based implementations range (symmetric) cryptographic kernels including AES: we design, implement, evaluate ISE, using RISC-V base ISA. Our ISE-supported first-order masked AES, for example, is order magnitude more efficient than software-only alternative with respect execution latency memory footprint; renders comparable unmasked same metrics, but also secure.