IoT application protection against power analysis attack

The era of the Internet of Things (IoT) has arrived and much information is transmitted through various small IoT devices. Public key cryptography can be used in the present internet environment to avoid eavesdropping. The well-known public key cryptography, Rivest–Shamir–Adleman cryptography and Elliptic Curve Cryptography are apt to be broken when quantum computing is introduced. Therefore, lattice-based cryptography has been proposed as a new public key cryptography to replace them. The Ring-LWE scheme has been proposed to implement lattice-based cryptography. To apply the scheme to IoT devices using 8-bit, 32-bit, or 64-bit microcontrollers, optimization is inevitable. Further, the 8-bit environment is more important for small IoT devices. However, Ring-LWE may be vulnerable to side-channel attacks. This paper analyzes the attack scenario and tenders a countermeasure through bit checking for IoT applications using 8-bit microcontrollers.