On the Influence of the FPGA Compiler Optimization Options on the Success of the Horizontal Attack
This work addresses security vulnerabilities in FPGA-based cryptographic systems for hardware designers and security researchers, but it is incremental as it builds on existing side-channel analysis methods.
The study investigated how FPGA compiler optimization options affect the success of side-channel attacks on cryptographic implementations, finding that these options have an unpredictable impact on attack success across different FPGAs and even within individual ones.
This paper reports about the impact of compiler options on the resistance of cryptographic implementations against side channel analysis attacks. We evaluated four compiler option for six different FPGAs from Intel and Xilinx. In order to ensure fair assessment we synthesized always the same VHDL code, kept the measurement setup and statistical analysis method etc. constant. Our analysis clearly shows that the compiler options have an impact on the success of attacks but also that the impact is unpredictable not only between different FPGAs but also for an individual FPGA.