OT-PCA: New Key-Recovery Plaintext-Checking Oracle Based Side-Channel Attacks on HQC with Offline Templates

In this paper, we introduce OT-PCA, a novel approach for conducting Plaintext-Checking (PC) oracle based side-channel attacks, specifically designed for Hamming Quasi-Cyclic (HQC). By calling the publicly accessible HQC decoder, we build offline templates that enable efficient extraction of soft in...

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Main Authors: Haiyue Dong, Qian Guo
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Ruhr-Universität Bochum 2024-12-01
Series:Transactions on Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems
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Online Access:https://tosc.iacr.org/index.php/TCHES/article/view/11929
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author Haiyue Dong
Qian Guo
author_facet Haiyue Dong
Qian Guo
author_sort Haiyue Dong
collection DOAJ
description In this paper, we introduce OT-PCA, a novel approach for conducting Plaintext-Checking (PC) oracle based side-channel attacks, specifically designed for Hamming Quasi-Cyclic (HQC). By calling the publicly accessible HQC decoder, we build offline templates that enable efficient extraction of soft information for hundreds of secret positions with just a single PC oracle call. Our method addresses critical challenges in optimizing key-related information extraction, including maximizing decryption output entropy and ensuring error pattern independence, through the use of genetic-style algorithms. Extensive simulations demonstrate that our new attack method significantly reduces the required number of oracle calls, achieving a 2.4-fold decrease for hqc-128 and even greater reductions for hqc-192 and hqc-256 compared to current state-of-the-art methods. Notably, the attack shows strong resilience against inaccuracy in the PC oracle—when the oracle accuracy decreases to 95%, the reduction factor in oracle call requirements increases to 7.6 for hqc-128. Lastly, a real-world evaluation conducted using power analysis on a platform with an ARM Cortex-M4 microcontroller validates the practical applicability and effectiveness of our approach.
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spelling doaj-art-42e61eb45cd741a8a17c22042d3748cb2025-08-20T01:54:50ZengRuhr-Universität BochumTransactions on Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems2569-29252024-12-012025110.46586/tches.v2025.i1.251-274OT-PCA: New Key-Recovery Plaintext-Checking Oracle Based Side-Channel Attacks on HQC with Offline TemplatesHaiyue Dong0Qian Guo1Independent Researcher, Lund, SwedenLund University, Lund, Sweden In this paper, we introduce OT-PCA, a novel approach for conducting Plaintext-Checking (PC) oracle based side-channel attacks, specifically designed for Hamming Quasi-Cyclic (HQC). By calling the publicly accessible HQC decoder, we build offline templates that enable efficient extraction of soft information for hundreds of secret positions with just a single PC oracle call. Our method addresses critical challenges in optimizing key-related information extraction, including maximizing decryption output entropy and ensuring error pattern independence, through the use of genetic-style algorithms. Extensive simulations demonstrate that our new attack method significantly reduces the required number of oracle calls, achieving a 2.4-fold decrease for hqc-128 and even greater reductions for hqc-192 and hqc-256 compared to current state-of-the-art methods. Notably, the attack shows strong resilience against inaccuracy in the PC oracle—when the oracle accuracy decreases to 95%, the reduction factor in oracle call requirements increases to 7.6 for hqc-128. Lastly, a real-world evaluation conducted using power analysis on a platform with an ARM Cortex-M4 microcontroller validates the practical applicability and effectiveness of our approach. https://tosc.iacr.org/index.php/TCHES/article/view/11929Code-based cryptographyNIST post-quantum cryptography standardizationHQCSide-channel attacksKEM
spellingShingle Haiyue Dong
Qian Guo
OT-PCA: New Key-Recovery Plaintext-Checking Oracle Based Side-Channel Attacks on HQC with Offline Templates
Transactions on Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems
Code-based cryptography
NIST post-quantum cryptography standardization
HQC
Side-channel attacks
KEM
title OT-PCA: New Key-Recovery Plaintext-Checking Oracle Based Side-Channel Attacks on HQC with Offline Templates
title_full OT-PCA: New Key-Recovery Plaintext-Checking Oracle Based Side-Channel Attacks on HQC with Offline Templates
title_fullStr OT-PCA: New Key-Recovery Plaintext-Checking Oracle Based Side-Channel Attacks on HQC with Offline Templates
title_full_unstemmed OT-PCA: New Key-Recovery Plaintext-Checking Oracle Based Side-Channel Attacks on HQC with Offline Templates
title_short OT-PCA: New Key-Recovery Plaintext-Checking Oracle Based Side-Channel Attacks on HQC with Offline Templates
title_sort ot pca new key recovery plaintext checking oracle based side channel attacks on hqc with offline templates
topic Code-based cryptography
NIST post-quantum cryptography standardization
HQC
Side-channel attacks
KEM
url https://tosc.iacr.org/index.php/TCHES/article/view/11929
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