MIFA: An MILP-based Framework for Improving Differential Fault Attacks
This work addresses the inefficiency of differential fault analysis (DFA) by proposing the first DFA framework based on mixed-integer linear programming (MILP). For the first time, MILP is employed to systematically search for differential trails with a unique solution, combined with bit-level single-bit flip fault modeling to optimize both the location and number of injected faults. The approach enables attacks on deeper-round implementations and allows theoretical computation of the minimal number of faults required to recover the secret key. When applied to the DEFAULT block cipher, the method uniquely recovers the full key with only three faults in the sixth-to-last round and two faults each in the seventh- and eighth-to-last rounds, significantly outperforming existing DFA results and effectively breaking the cipher’s claimed DFA resistance.