Simple Power Analysis on Elliptic Curve Cryptosystems and Countermeasures: Practical Work

Simple Power Analysis (SPA), first introduced by Kocher et al. in [1], is a technique that involves directly interpreting power consumption measurements collected during cryptographic operations. Although the possibility of attacking elliptic curve cryptosystems (ECC) by SPA repeatedly appears in research papers, all accessible references evade the essence of reporting conclusive experiments where actual elliptic curve cryptosystems were successfully attacked and prevented. In this paper we describe power analysis experiments conducted on 3 implementations of elliptic curve cryptosystems. They are respectively binary, double-and-add-always and Montgomery methods of point multiplication. The experimental results indicate that using SPA analysis, the complete key material could be successfully retrieved from binary method, but not from double-and-add-always and Montgomery method.