A Thorough Evaluation of RAMBAM

The application of masking, widely regarded as the most robust and reliable countermeasure against Side-Channel Analysis (SCA) attacks, has been the subject of extensive research across a range of cryptographic algorithms, especially AES. However, the implementation cost associated with applying such a countermeasure can be significant and even in some scenarios infeasible due to considerations such as area and latency overheads, as well as the need for fresh randomness to ensure the security properties of the resulting design. Most of these overheads originate from the ability to maintain security in the presence of physical defaults such as glitches and transitions. Among several schemes with a trade-off between such overheads, RAMBAM, presented at CHES 2022, offers an ultra-low latency in terms of the number of clock cycles. It is dedicated to the AES and utilizes redundant representations of the finite field elements to enhance protection against both passive and active physical attacks.