Cryptology ePrint Archive: Report 2012/329

An Analysis of ZVP-Attack on ECC Cryptosystems

Claude Crépeau and Raza Ali Kazmi

Abstract: Elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) is an efficient public cryptosystem with a short key size. For this reason it is suitable for implementing on memory-constraint devices such as smart cards, mobile devices, etc. However, these devices leak information about their private key through side channels (power consumption, electromagnetic radiation, timing etc) during cryptographic processing. In this paper we have examined countermeasures against a specific class of side channel attacks (power analysis) called Zero-Value Point Attack (ZVP), using elliptic curve isomorphism and isogeny. We found that these methods are an efficient way of securing cryptographic devices using ECC against ZVP attack. Our main contribution is to extend the work of Akishita and Takagi [3,2] to binary fields. We also provide a more detail analysis of the ZVP attack over prime fields.

Category / Keywords: public-key cryptography /

Publication Info: elliptic curve cryptosystem

Date: received 9 Jun 2012

Contact author: raza-ali kazmi at mail mcgill ca

Available formats: PDF | BibTeX Citation

Version: 20120612:040504 (All versions of this report)

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