Template Attacks on ECDSA

Marcel Medwed; Elisabeth Oswald

Paper 2008/081

Template Attacks on ECDSA

Marcel Medwed and Elisabeth Oswald

Abstract

Template attacks have been considered exclusively in the context of implementations of symmetric cryptographic algorithms on 8-bit devices. Within these scenarios, they have proven to be the most powerful attacks. This is not surprising because they assume the most powerful adversaries. In this article we investigate how template attacks can be applied to implementations of an asymmetric cryptographic algorithm on a 32-bit platform. The asymmetric cryptosystem under scrutiny is the elliptic curve digital signature algorithm (ECDSA). ECDSA is particularly suitable for 32-bit platforms. In this article we show that even SPA resistant implementations of ECDSA on a typical 32-bit platform succumb to template-based SPA attacks. The only way to secure such implementations against template-based SPA attacks is to make them resistant against DPA attacks.

Note: Report shows the practical application of template attacks to reveal ECDSA keys of an implementation on an ARM7 platform. We hope to submit an extended version of this paper soon.

Metadata

Available format(s): PDF
Category: Implementation
Publication info: Published elsewhere. Unknown where it was published
Keywords: elliptic curve cryptosystem power analysis template attacks
Contact author(s): Elisabeth Oswald @ bristol ac uk
History: 2008-02-27: received
Short URL: https://ia.cr/2008/081
License: CC BY

BibTeX

@misc{cryptoeprint:2008/081,
      author = {Marcel Medwed and Elisabeth Oswald},
      title = {Template Attacks on {ECDSA}},
      howpublished = {Cryptology {ePrint} Archive, Paper 2008/081},
      year = {2008},
      url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2008/081}
}