Cryptology ePrint Archive: Report 2004/342

A comb method to render ECC resistant against Side Channel Attacks

Mustapha Hedabou and Pierre Pinel and Lucien Bénéteau

Abstract: Side Channel Attacks may exploit leakage information to break cryptosystems on smard card devices. In this paper we present a new SCA-resistant elliptic curve scalar multiplication algorithm, based on the Lim and Lee technique. The proposed algorithm builds a sequence of bit-strings representing the scalar $k$, characterized by the fact that all bit-strings are different from zero; this property will ensure a uniform computation behaviour for the algorithm, and thus will make it secure against SPA (Simple Power Analysis) attacks. The use of a recently introduced randomization technique achieves the security of the proposed scheme against other SCA attacks. Furthermore, the proposed countermeasures do not penalize the computation time

Category / Keywords: implementation / ECC, SCA attacks, scalar multiplication

Publication Info: paper submitted only to the Cryptology ePrint Archive.

Date: received 2 Dec 2004

Contact author: hedabou at insa-toulouse fr

Available formats: Postscript (PS) | Compressed Postscript (PS.GZ) | PDF | BibTeX Citation

Version: 20041207:053709 (All versions of this report)

Discussion forum: Show discussion | Start new discussion