An investigation on implementations of theoretical whitebox cryptographic solutions
Abstract
Whitebox Cryptography techniques are those which are aimed at protecting software
implementations of cryptographic algorithms against key recovery in unprotected
devices. The sensitive data embedded in the code is the major concern in
any security-sensitive application. Therefore, data encryption is indispensable. But
white box cryptography aims to protect the security keys used for data encryption
from being revealed. As a whole, such a type of cryptography concerns the analysis
of algorithms that are said to operate in a whitebox attack context. In this
attack context, all information and details of implementations are visible to an attacker.
The attacker not only sees the input and output portions, but they can
also see every intermediary implementation and operation that happened along the
way. The challenge that whitebox cryptography aims to address is implementing
a cryptographic algorithm that will keep the cryptographic assets of software secure
even when subject to whitebox attacks. As converting blackbox cryptographic
algorithms to whitebox has some sort of performance consequences that have not
been measured or identified properly, we will compare the performance of alternative
algorithms. In addition to that, as some of the algorithms have very few implementations
and any e↵ective open source implementation is yet to be found that will
help the researchers in this sector, we will write an open source white box implementation
for our performance analysis and the future benefit of the researchers.
Moreover, companies lacking resources /skills may also be benefited because of such
implementation. In addition, we want to investigate the kinds of attacks that can
be launched against the solution in our library and try to add security features to
strengthen them to resist common forms of attacks.