{"paper":{"title":"Exploring Side-Channel Protections in Hardware Implementations of PQC ML-KEM Verification","license":"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":["cs.AR"],"primary_cat":"cs.CR","authors_text":"A. Adam Ding, Davis Ranney, Yashaswini I Makaram, Yunsi Fei","submitted_at":"2026-06-30T13:57:33Z","abstract_excerpt":"As ML-KEM is adopted as a post-quantum cryptographic standard, resilience against physical side-channel attacks has become essential. Among the constituent steps, the decapsulation Fujisaki-Okamoto (FO) verification is particularly vulnerable to side-channel power and electromagnetic (EM) analysis. In this work, we focus on common FPGA-based implementations and examine their side-channel vulnerabilities, and compare them with those of microcontroller implementations. Three verification implementations, unprotected, hash-based (first-order), and higher-order masked, are evaluated for side-chann"},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"2606.31681","kind":"arxiv","version":1},"verdict":{"id":null,"model_set":{},"created_at":null,"strongest_claim":"","one_line_summary":"","pipeline_version":null,"weakest_assumption":"","pith_extraction_headline":""},"integrity":{"clean":true,"summary":{"advisory":0,"critical":0,"by_detector":{},"informational":0},"endpoint":"/pith/2606.31681/integrity.json","findings":[],"available":true,"detectors_run":[],"snapshot_sha256":"c28c3603d3b5d939e8dc4c7e95fa8dfce3d595e45f758748cecf8e644a296938"},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}