Comparison of Simple Power Analysis Attack Resistant Algorithms for an Elliptic Curve Cryptosystem

Abstract : There has been a lot of interest in recent years in the problems faced by cryptosystems due to side channel attacks such as Simple Power Analysis (SPA) attacks. Algorithms for elliptic curve point scalar multiplication such as the double and add method are prone to these attacks. The protected double and add algorithm provides a simple solution to this problem but is costly in terms of performance. Another class of algorithm for point scalar multiplication that makes use of special addition chains can be used to protect against SPA attacks. A reconfigurable architecture for a cryptographic processor is presented and a number of algorithms for point multiplication are implemented and compared. These algorithms have a degree of parallelism within their operations where a number of multiplications can be executed in parallel. Sophisticated scheduling techniques can exploit this parallelism in order to optimize the performance of the calculation. Post place and route results for the processor are given.