Fault based attack of the Rijndael cryptosystem

Abstract

In the present paper a fault based attack has been proposed against Rijndael. The paper shows how the algebraic properties of Rijndael can help an attacker to control and mount attacks against Rijndael. The paper describes a step by step approach how an attacker induces a fault, detects the nature of the fault induced and accordingly use different strategies to evaluate the key. The computations of the algorithms are simpler and the attack requires minimum number of faulty ciphertexts compared to the best known work in the related field.

Keywords and phrases:

• Rijndael cryptosystem
• fault attack
• fault model
• inverse in galois field
• fault propagation
• diffusion
• side channel cryptanalysis