MIFA: An MILP-based Framework for Improving Differential Fault Attacks

Computer Science > Cryptography and Security [Submitted on 7 Aug 2026] MIFA: An MILP-based Framework for Improving Differential Fault Attacks Hanbeom Shin, Insung Kim, Sunyeop Kim, Byoungjin Seok, Deukjo Hong, Jaechul Sung, Seokhie Hong, Sangjin Lee, Dongjae Lee At ASIACRYPT 2021, Baksi et al. introduced DEFAULT, a block cipher designed to algorithmically resist Differential Fault Attack (DFA), claiming 64-bit DFA security regardless of the number of injected faults. At EUROCRYPT 2022, Nageler et al. demonstrated that DEFAULT's claimed DFA resistance can be broken by applying an information-combining technique. More recently, at ASIACRYPT 2024, Jana et al. improved DFA by searching for differential trails with a single solution. They showed that, for DEFAULT with a simple key schedule, injecting five faults at the fifth-to-last round reduces the key space to one, and for BAKSHEESH, injecting twelve faults at the third-to-last round achieves the same result. In this paper, we propose a new DFA framework that utilizes a Mixed-Integer Linear Programming (MILP) solver. This framework makes it possible to attack deeper rounds than previously achieved, reducing the number of fault injections required for key recovery. Furthermore, we present a method to determine the most efficient fault injection bit positions by systematically analyzing the input differences from all possible single bit-flip faults, thereby further reducing the required number of faults. This systematic analysis has the significant advantage of allowing us to theoretically calculate the required number of faults. Applying our framework, for DEFAULT, injecting three faults at the sixth-to-last round and two faults at the seventh- and eighth-to-last rounds reduces the key space to one. Comments: 24 pages, 2 figures Subjects: Cryptography and Security (cs.CR) Cite as: arXiv:2608.06837 [cs.CR]   (or arXiv:2608.06837v1 [cs.CR] for this version)   https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2608.06837 Focus to learn more Journal reference: IACR Transactions on Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems, Vol. 2026, No. 3, pp. 465-488, 2026 Related DOI: https://doi.org/10.46586/tches.v2026.i3.465-488 Focus to learn more Submission history From: Sunyeop Kim [view email] [v1] Fri, 7 Aug 2026 05:57:41 UTC (64 KB) Access Paper: view license Current browse context: cs.CR < prev   |   next > new | recent | 2026-08 Change to browse by: cs References & Citations NASA ADS Google Scholar Semantic Scholar Export BibTeX Citation Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Demos Related Papers About arXivLabs Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)