CoLFRee: Combined Leakage and Fault Resilience

• Applicant: Dr. Maximilian Orlt
• Subject Area: Security and Dependability, Operating-, Communication- and Distributed Systems ; Theoretical Computer Science
• Term: since 2026
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 570167364

The project "Combined Leakage and Fault Resilience (CoLFRee)" targets the protection of cryptographic implementations from both side-channel and fault-injection attacks. These sophisticated attacks can compromise even cryptographic schemes that are considered provably secure. Typically, countermeasures for each type of attack have been developed separately, but recent studies indicate that their combination could pose an even more significant security threat. Our research aims to investigate these combined attacks further, develop robust protection mechanisms against them, and implement these results on real devices. This project is structured into three work packages: Initially, we will develop a security model that defines these combined attacks more accurately; subsequently, we aim to design countermeasures that are both efficient and provably secure under this model; finally, we plan to implement and validate these countermeasures on real-world devices to confirm their effectiveness. This project will significantly enhance the security and resilience of cryptographic systems against combined side-channel and fault-injection attacks, bridging the gap between theoretical and applied cryptography.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants