Microsemi and INVIA deliver DPA-resistant cryptographic software on SmartFusion FPGAs

The folks from Microsemi have just announced the immediate availability of INVIA's differential power analysis (DPA)-resistant products on Microsemi's flash-based FPGA devices and SmartFusion chips (where they describe SmartFusion as “The industry's only customizable system-on-chip (cSoC) solution which integrates an FPGA with analog functions and a hard ARM microcontroller core.”)

DPA is a technique used by hackers to extract secret keys and compromise the security of semiconductors and tamper-resistant devices by analyzing their power consumption. Microsemi is the only major provider of cSoCs and FPGAs to hold a patent license from Cryptography Research, Inc (CRI) for DPA-countermeasures, and to offer INVIA's software libraries for AES, RSA and ECC cryptographic algorithms.  

"Our collaboration with INVIA provides our customers with leading-edge solutions that guard against the increasingly serious threat of DPA security breaches in government, industrial, financial and other high-profile applications," said Esam Elashmawi, vice president and general manager at Microsemi. "Combined with our ability to pass through Microsemi's CRI license to customers for many products, this allows them to employ DPA countermeasures quickly and efficiently – truly maximizing our relationships for the benefit of our customer base."

INVIA's DPA- and fault-resistant cryptographic library runs on Microsemi's SmartFusion single-chip cSoC, which features a Cortex-M3 MCU, a full-fledged FPGA, and programmable analog fabric all on a single-chip. Available immediately are INVIA's DPA-resistant implementations of the popular AES private key, RSA public key algorithms and ECC public key algorithm.

"We're pleased that through our partnership with Microsemi, we're able to deliver customers crypto-algorithms designed to resist the most advanced side-channel and fault-injection attacks," said Martin Gallezot, marketing and sales director of INVIA. "Software with this level of security used to be available only on smart card-like devices. It is now available on SmartFusion devices."

For more information on Microsemi's SoC products visit: www.microsemi.com/soc. Those interested in licensing INVIA's AES, RSA or ECC software libraries should contact Gallezot at martin.gallezot@invia.fr  or +33-44-22-45070.

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