A unified architecture for crypto-processing in embedded systems

Security is an emerging concern in the design of embedded systems. Various side channel attacks must be tackled by the implementation of secure embedded system. This paper proposes a unified architecture of crypto-processor that can resist probing attacks of internal bus and memory. Private keys are maintained within the execution unit to reduce the possibility of leakage during cryptographic operations. The scalable execution structure supports different key lengths and achieves high performance. The main execution unit of the proposed architecture has been implemented based on Avanti 0.35 micron library, maximum 64.4MHz frequency is reported with the utilization of 325 thousand sates.