"AI Power Analysis Breaks Post-quantum Security Algorithm"

Swedish researchers have cracked one of the key post-quantum security algorithms. The US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) selected the CRYSTALS-Kyber algorithm last year as part of the standards for encapsulating data as security against quantum computer attacks. Researchers at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, used a new Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithm together with side-channel attacks involving the power lines to break the CRYSTALS-Kyber algorithm. NIST chose CRYSTALS-Kyber as a public key encryption and key encapsulation mechanism to be standardized. It is also included in the National Security Agency's (NSA) suite of cryptographic algorithms recommended for national security systems. Therefore, it is essential to analyze the side-channel attack resilience of CRYSTALS-Kyber implementations. The algorithm has already been hardened against direct attacks, but the researchers explored a more sophisticated side-channel attack that uses changes in power consumption to break the code running on an ARM Cortex-M4 CPU. This article continues to discuss researchers successfully breaking the CRYSTALS-Kyber algorithm using a combination of an AI algorithm and side-channel attacks. 

eeNews Power reports "AI Power Analysis Breaks Post-quantum Security Algorithm"