Online Template Attacks: Revisited

An online template attack (OTA) is a powerful technique previously used to attack elliptic curve scalar multiplication algorithms. This attack has only been analyzed in the realm of power consumption and EM side channels, where the signals leak related to the value being processed. However, microarchitecture signals have no such feature, invalidating some assumptions from previous OTA works.In this paper, we revisit previous OTA descriptions, proposing a generic framework and evaluation metrics for any side-channel signal. Our analysis reveals OTA features not previously considered, increasing its application scenarios and requiring a fresh countermeasure analysis to prevent it.In this regard, we demonstrate that OTAs can work in the backward direction, allowing to mount an augmented projective coordinates attack with respect to the proposal by Naccache, Smart and Stern (Eurocrypt 2004). This demonstrates that randomizing the initial targeted algorithm state does not prevent the attack as believed in previous works.We analyze three libraries libgcrypt, mbedTLS, and wolfSSL using two microarchitecture side channels. For the libgcrypt case, we target its EdDSA implementation using Curve25519 twist curve. We obtain similar results for mbedTLS and wolfSSL with curve secp256r1. For each library, we execute extensive attack instances that are able to recover the complete scalar in all cases using a single trace.This work demonstrates that microarchitecture online template attacks are also very powerful in this scenario, recovering secret information without knowing a leakage model. This highlights the importance of developing secure-by-default implementations, instead of fix-on-demand ones.

Ready-made short basis for GLV+GLS on high degree twisted curves

<abstract><p>The crucial step in elliptic curve scalar multiplication based on scalar decompositions using efficient endomorphisms—such as GLV, GLS or GLV+GLS—is to produce a short basis of a lattice involving the eigenvalues of the endomorphisms, which usually is obtained by lattice basis reduction algorithms or even more specialized algorithms. Recently, lattice basis reduction is found to be unnecessary. Benjamin Smith (AMS 2015) was able to immediately write down a short basis of the lattice for the GLV, GLS, GLV+GLS of quadratic twists using elementary facts about quadratic rings. Certainly it is always more convenient to use a ready-made short basis than to compute a new one by some algorithm. In this paper, we extend Smith's method on GLV+GLS for quadratic twists to quartic and sextic twists, and give ready-made short bases for $ 4 $-dimensional decompositions on these high degree twisted curves. In particular, our method gives a unified short basis compared with Hu et al.'s method (DCC 2012) for $ 4 $-dimensional decompositions on sextic twisted curves.</p></abstract>

Faster Montgomery and double-add ladders for short Weierstrass curves

The Montgomery ladder and Joye ladder are well-known algorithms for elliptic curve scalar multiplication with a regular structure. The Montgomery ladder is best known for its implementation on Montgomery curves, which requires 5M+4S+1m+8A per scalar bit, and 6 field registers. Here (M, S,m,A) represent respectively field Multiplications, Squarings, multiplications by a curve constant, and Additions or subtractions. This ladder is also complete, meaning that it works on all input points and all scalars. Many protocols do not use Montgomery curves, but instead use prime-order curves in short Weierstrass form. These have historically been much slower, with ladders costing at least 14 multiplications or squarings per bit: 8M + 6S + 27A for the Montgomery ladder and 8M+ 6S + 30A for the Joye ladder. In 2017, Kim et al. improved the Montgomery ladder to 8M+ 4S + 12A + 1H per bit using 9 registers, where the H represents a halving. Hamburg simplified Kim et al.’s formulas to 8M+ 4S + 8A + 1H per bit using 6 registers. Here we present improved formulas which compute the Montgomery ladder on short Weierstrass curves using 8M+ 3S + 7A per bit, and requiring 6 registers. We also give formulas for the Joye ladder that use 9M+3S+7A per bit, requiring 5 registers. One of our new formulas supports very efficient 4-way vectorization. We also discuss curve invariants, exceptional points, side-channel protection and how to set up and finish these ladder operations. Finally, we show a novel technique to make these ladders complete when the curve order is not divisible by 2 or 3, at a modest increase in cost. A sample implementation of these techniques is given in the supplementary material, also posted at https://github.com/bitwiseshiftleft/ladder_formulas

EFFICIENT OPERATIONS IN LARGE FINITE FIELDS FOR ELLIPTIC CURVE CRYPTOGRAPHIC

An efficient method to compute the finite field multiplication for Elliptic Curve point multiplication at high speed encryption of the message is presented. The methods of the operations are based on dynamic lookup table and modified Horner rule method. The modified Horner rule method is not only to finite field operations but also to Elliptic curve scalar multiplication in the encryption and decryption. By comparison with using Russian Peasant method and in the new proposed method, one of the advantages of utilizing the proposed algorithm is that in the Elliptic Curve point addition are reduced by a factor of three in GF (2163). Therefore, using the Algorithm 1 running on Intel CPU, computation cost of the multiplication method is above 70% faster than using standard multiplication by Russian Peasant method. Ultimately, the proposed Algorithm 1 for evaluating multiplication can be made regular, simple and suitable for software implementations.

Parallel and Regular Algorithm of Elliptic Curve Scalar Multiplication over Binary Fields

Accelerating scalar multiplication has always been a significant topic when people talk about the elliptic curve cryptosystem. Many approaches have been come up with to achieve this aim. An interesting perspective is that computers nowadays usually have multicore processors which could be used to do cryptographic computations in parallel style. Inspired by this idea, we present a new parallel and efficient algorithm to speed up scalar multiplication. First, we introduce a new regular halve-and-add method which is very efficient by utilizing λ projective coordinate. Then, we compare many different algorithms calculating double-and-add and halve-and-add. Finally, we combine the best double-and-add and halve-and-add methods to get a new faster parallel algorithm which costs around 12.0% less than the previous best. Furthermore, our algorithm is regular without any dummy operations, so it naturally provides protection against simple side-channel attacks.