Robust codes and robust, fault-tolerant architectures of the Advanced Encryption Standard

Hardware implementations of cryptographic algorithms are vulnerable to fault analysis attacks. Methods based on traditional fault-tolerant architectures are not suited for protection against these attacks. To detect these attacks we propose an architecture based on robust nonlinear systematic error-detecting codes. These nonlinear codes are capable of providing uniform error detecting coverage independently of the error distributions. They make no assumptions about what faults or errors will be injected by an attacker. Architectures based on these robust constructions have fewer undetectable errors than linear codes with the same n, k. We present the general properties and construction methods of these codes as well as their application for the protection of a cryptographic devices implementing the Advanced Encryption Standard.