Exploiting Cryptographic Architectures over Hardware Vs. Software Implementations: Advantages and Trade-Offs

Cryptographic modules can be implemented in both hardware and software. Although software cryptographic implementations are cost-effective and more flexible, they seem to provide a much lower level of security in relation to their hardware equivalents. The uncontrolled memory access, the vulnerabilities imposed by the OS and the facility of modifying software implementations are some of the security barriers of software cryptographic modules. This works deals with the exploitation of security architectures via software and hardware implementations. Especially it is centers in the advantages and the trade-offs of each one of the two alternatives integration approaches. Key-Words: Software/hardware cryptographic implementations, memory access, reverse-engineering, timing and power analysis attacks, OS vulnerabilities, random number generators, key storage.