METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR MINIMIZING DIFFERENTIAL POWER ATTACKS ON PROCESSORS

摘要

A method of masking a conditional jump operation in a cryptographic processor, wherein program execution jumps to one of two branches dependent on a first or second condition of a distinguishing value V relative to a reference wherein the reference is bounded by an upper limit Vmax and a lower limit Vmin. The method comprising the steps of determining the location of a conditional jump and inserting code thereat for executing instructions to change program execution to a respective one of the two branches by using said distinguishing value and a base address to compute a target address, wherein for each evaluation of said condition a different number of instructions are executed, thereby minimizing the effectiveness of a differential power attack.