Integrated capacitor switchbox for security protection

This paper presents a capacitor bank and a switch box as an on-chip Power Analysis Attack (PAA) countermeasure for embedded systems. This approach allows for the decoupling and isolation of individual sensitive and non-sensitive modules from the power supply. The random connections made by the switch box between functional modules and charged capacitors also contribute to the decorrelation between collected traces and the operations being performed by sensitive modules. A DC-DC converter is also present to generate a stable and suitable supply voltage. The design was simulated using 65 nm CMOS technology in Cadence, with an implementation of the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) Sbox as a test module. Initial results showed a reduction in the effectiveness of the Correlation Power Analysis (CPA) attack on the Sbox module.