Paper 2013/764

Dynamic Countermeasure Against the Zero Power Analysis

Jean-Luc Danger and Sylvain Guilley and Philippe Hoogvorst and Cédric Murdica and David Naccache

Abstract

Elliptic Curve Cryptography can be vulnerable to Side-Channel Attacks, such as the Zero Power Analysis (ZPA). This attack takes advantage of the occurrence of special points that bring a zero-value when computing a doubling or an addition of points. This paper consists in analysing this attack. Some properties of the said special points are explicited. A novel dynamic countermeasure is described. The elliptic curve formul\ae{} are updated depending on the elliptic curve and the provided base point.