Title: Securing pairing-based cryptography on smartcards

Authors: Mustapha Hedabou

Addresses: Department of Computer Science, ENSA de Safi, Route Sidi Bouzid BP 63, Safi, Morocco

Abstract: Research efforts have produced many algorithms for fast pairing computation and several efficient hardware implementations. However, side channel attacks (SCAs) are a serious threat on hardware implementations. Previous works in this area have provided some costly countermeasures against side channel attacks. In this paper, we propose a new countermeasure based on the isomorphism classes in order to secure pairing computation on elliptic curves defined over K with Char(K)≠2, 3. The proposed technique requires only eight additional field multiplications which is negligible compared to the cost of the other known countermeasures.

Keywords: fast pairing computation; countermeasures; isomorphism classes; side channel attacks; SCAs; pairing-based cryptography; smartcards; elliptic curves; security.

DOI: 10.1504/IJICS.2012.051091

International Journal of Information and Computer Security, 2012 Vol.5 No.1, pp.68 - 76

Published online: 30 Aug 2014 *

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