PICARO - A Block Cipher Allowing Efficient Higher-Order Side-Channel Resistance

Many papers deal with the problem of constructing an efficient masking scheme for existing block ciphers. We take the reverse approach: that is, given a proven masking scheme (Rivain and Prouff, CHES 2010) we design a block cipher that fits well the masking constraints. The difficulty of implementing efficient masking for a block cipher comes mainly from the S-boxes. Therefore the choice of an adequate S-box is the first and most critical step of our work. The S-box we selected is non-bijective; we discuss the resulting design and security problems. A complete design of the cipher is given, as well as some implementation results.