Effective Simple-Power Analysis Attacks of Elliptic Curve Cryptography on Embedded Systems

Abstract

Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC), initially proposed by Koblitz [17] and Miller [20], is a public-key cipher. Compared with other popular public-key ciphers (e.g., RSA), ECC features a shorter key length for the same level of security. For example, a 256-bit ECC cipher provides 128-bit security, equivalent to a 2048-bit RSA cipher [4]. Using smaller keys, ECC requires less memory for performing cryptographic operations. Embedded systems, especially given the proliferation of Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices and platforms, require efficient and low-power secure communications between edge devices and gateways/clouds. ECC has been widely adopted in IoT systems for authentication of communications, while RSA, which is much more costly to compute, remains the standard for desktops and servers.