Construction of Side Channel Attacks Resistant S-boxes using Genetic Algorithms based on Coordinate Functions
This addresses the need for more secure cryptographic components against side channel attacks, which is an incremental improvement in the domain of cryptography.
The paper tackles the problem of generating substitution-boxes (s-boxes) resistant to side channel attacks in cryptography by introducing a novel method using genetic algorithms on coordinate functions, resulting in improved security properties such as transparency order and signal-to-noise ratio, with experiments showing up to 2071 better s-boxes in dimensions 4x4 to 8x8 compared to initial ones.
Background and Objectives: Substitution-box (s-box) is one of the essential components to create confusion and nonlinear properties in cryptography. To strengthening a cipher against various attacks, including side channel attacks, these boxes need to have numerous security properties. In this paper, a novel method to generate s-boxes is introduced aimed at improving the resistance of s-boxes against side channel attacks. Methods: In the preprocessing phase of this approach, a suitable initial s-box which has some basic security properties is generated by adopting a fast algorithm. Then, in the main stage, using the initial s-box, we generate new s-boxes which not only have the properties of the initial S-box but also have been significantly improved under another set of security properties. To do this, new s-boxes are generated using a genetic algorithm on a particular subset of the linear combination set of coordinate functions of the initial s-box in the preprocessing stage. Results: The performed experiments demonstrate that the values of all security properties of these new s-boxes, especially the measures of transparency order, signal-to-noise ratio, confusion coefficient, bijection property, fixed point, and opposite fixed points, have been substantially improved. For example, our experiments indicate that 70, 220, 2071, 43, and 406 s-boxes are found better than the initial s-box, respectively, in the dimensions of 4x4 through 8x8 Conclusion: In this article, a new s-box construction method is introduced in which the properties related to side channel attacks are improved, without reducing other security properties. Besides, some results obtained from generated s-boxes in the dimensions of 4x4 through 8x8 demonstrated that the generated s-boxes are not only improved relative to the initial s-box, but in some cases, considerably better than some well-known s-boxes.