Evolving highly nonlinear balanced boolean functions with improved resistance to DPA attacks

Abstract

Recent years have witnessed significant increase in number of side-channel attacks on the cryptographic algorithms and hence the attempts to defend them. Note that Differential Power Analysis (DPA) is the most powerful attack which belongs to the class of side channel attacks. In order to defend against DPA attacks, there is a growing demand for the construction of Boolean functions and S-boxes. In this regard, we develop three effective algorithms that are based on evolutionary computing techniques. As a result, three 8-bit highly nonlinear balanced Boolean functions have been evolved in this work that have higher DPA resistance than others published previously. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015.