Since the end of the 1990s, cryptosystems implemented on smart cards have had to deal with two main categories of attacks: side-channel attacks and fault injection attacks. Countermeasures have been developed and validated against these two types of attacks, taking into account a well-defined attacker model. This work focuses on small vulnerabilities and countermeasures related to the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) algorithm. The work done in this paper focuses on protecting the ECDSA algorithm against fault-injection attacks. More precisely, we are interested in the countermeasures of scalar multiplication in the body of the elliptic curves to protect against attacks concerning only a few bits of secret may be sufficient to recover the private key. ECDSA can be implemented in different ways, in software or via dedicated hardware or a mix of both. Many different architectures are therefore possible to implement an ECDSA-based system. For this reason, this work focuses mainly on the hardware implementation of the digital signature ECDSA. In addition, the proposed ECDSA architecture with and without fault detection for the scalar multiplication have been implemented on Xilinx field programmable gate arrays (FPGA) platform (Virtex-5). Our implementation results have been compared and discussed. Our area, frequency, area overhead and frequency degradation have been compared and it is shown that the proposed architecture of ECDSA with fault detection for the scalar multiplication allows a trade-off between the hardware overhead and the security of the ECDSA.

Cryptographic devices’ complexity necessitates fast security simulation environments against fault attacks. SystemC, a promising candidate in Electronic System Levels (ESLs), can achieve higher simulation speeds while maintaining accuracy and reliability, and its modular and hierarchical design allows for efficient modeling of complex cryptographic algorithms and protocols. However, code modification is required for fault injection and detection. Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP) can test cryptographic models’ robustness without modifications, potentially replacing real cryptanalysis schemes and reducing the time and effort required for fault injection and detection. Through the utilization of a fault injection/detection environment, this paper presents a novel approach to simulating the security fault attacks of ASCON cryptographic systems at the ESL. The purpose of this methodology is to evaluate the resistance of ASCON SystemC models against fault attacks. The proposed methodology leverages the advantages of AOP to enhance the fault injection and detection process. By applying AOP techniques, we inject faults into the SystemC models without making any changes to the main codebase. This approach not only improves the efficiency of testing cryptographic systems but also ensures that the main functionality remains intact during the fault injection process. The methodology was validated using three scenarios and SystemC ASCON as a case study. The first simulation involved evaluating fault detection capabilities, the second focused on the impact of AOP on executable file size and simulation time, and the third focused on the ESL impact on the ASCON design process. Simulation results show that this methodology can perfectly evaluate the robustness of the ASCON design against fault injection attacks with no significant impact on simulation time and file executable size. Additionally, the simulation results prove that the ASCON development life cycle at the ESL reduces the amount of time devoted to the design procedure by 83.34%, and the ASCON security attack simulations at the ESL decrease the simulation time by 40% compared to the register transfer level (RTL).