The ISC International Journal of Information Security

Abstract Differential Fault Analysis (DFA) represents one of the most effective physical attacks against cryptographic algorithms. It exploits the implementation weaknesses by injecting faults. DFA is a cryptographic technique in which an attacker intentionally injects errors into a cryptographic system and leverages the differences caused by these deliberate faults while executing cryptographic algorithms. The attacker can gain insights into the cryptographic operations by comparing the correct and faulty ciphertexts. This research applies DFA to BipBip, an ultra-low-latency tweakable block cipher characterized by a 24-bit tweakable block and a 256-bit master key. Our primary assumption is that the tweak remains fixed within BipBip. This study’s findings reveal that the structural design of the BipBip block cipher is susceptible to differential fault analysis. We demonstrate a significant vulnerability by injecting a precise number of 30 random faults into different states of BipBip. Through an exhaustive search process, we successfully retrieved the master key. Furthermore, this research marks the first application of differential fault analysis in identifying implementation weaknesses within BipBip, highlighting a critical security concern.