MASK Falcon: A Masked Gaussian Sampler for the Falcon Post Quantum Cryptography Scheme

This paper deals with the security of a post-quantum digital signature scheme namely Falcon, which has been standardised by NIST. Falcon relies heavily on discrete Gaussian sampling, which is susceptible to side-channel attacks, which exploit physical leakage from hardware implementations. To mitigate these attacks, MASK-Falcon, a side-channel resistant Gaussian sampler architecture for Falcon cryptography scheme is presented in this paper. The design incorporates first-order Boolean masking to prevent power analysis attacks. The suggested architecture, which exhibits masking behavior, is described in synthesizable RTL and functionally validated through simulation. For leakage-resilient Falcon implementations in post-quantum applications, MASK-Falcon offers a useful and safe hardware building block.