Paper 2008/368

Side Channel Attack Resistant Implementation of Multi-Power RSA using Hensel Lifting

Varad Kirtane and C. Pandu Rangan

Abstract

Multi-Power RSA [1] is a fast variant of RSA [2] with a small decryption time, making it attractive for implementation on lightweight cryptographic devices such as smart cards. Hensel Lifting is a key component in the implementation of fast Multi-Power RSA Decryption. However, it is found that a naive implementation of this algorithm is vulnerable to a host of side channel attacks, some of them powerful enough to entirely break the cryptosystem by providing a factorisation of the public modulus $N$. We propose here a secure (under reasonable assumptions) implementation of the Hensel Lifting algorithm. We then use this algorithm to obtain a secure implementation of Multi-Power RSA Decryption.