Planned maintenance
A system upgrade is planned for 10/12-2024, at 12:00-13:00. During this time DiVA will be unavailable.
Change search
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf
On the Applicability of a Cache Side-Channel Attack on ECDSA Signatures: The Flush+Reload attack on the point multiplication in ECDSA signature generation process
Blekinge Institute of Technology, Faculty of Computing, Department of Computer Science and Engineering.
2015 (English)Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE creditsStudent thesis
Abstract [en]

Context. Digital counterparts of handwritten signatures are known as Digital Signatures. The Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) is an Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) primitive, which is used for generating and verifying digital signatures. The attacks that target an implementation of a cryptosystem are known as side-channel attacks. The Flush+Reload attack is a cache side-channel attack that relies on cache hits/misses to recover secret information from the target program execution. In elliptic curve cryptosystems, side-channel attacks are particularly targeted towards the point multiplication step. The Gallant-Lambert-Vanstone (GLV) method for point multiplication is a special method that speeds up the computation for elliptic curves with certain properties.

Objectives. In this study, we investigate the applicability of the Flush+Reload attack on ECDSA signatures that employ the GLV method to protect point multiplication.

Methods. We demonstrate the attack through an experiment using the curve secp256k1. We perform a pair of experiments to estimate both the applicability and the detection rate of the attack in capturing side-channel information.

Results. Through our attack, we capture side-channel information about the decomposed GLV scalars.

Conclusions. Based on an analysis of the results, we conclude that for certain implementation choices, the Flush+Reload attack is applicable on ECDSA signature generation process that employs the GLV method. The practitioner should be aware of the implementation choices which introduce vulnerabilities, and avoid the usage of such ECDSA implementations.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2015. , p. 75
Keywords [en]
Digital signatures, Elliptic curve cryptography, GLV method, Side-channel attack
National Category
Computer Systems
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:bth-10820OAI: oai:DiVA.org:bth-10820DiVA, id: diva2:861503
Subject / course
DV2566 Master's Thesis (120 credits) in Computer Science
Educational program
DVAXA Master of Science Programme in Computer Science
Presentation
2015-09-21, J1620, Blekinge Tekniska Högskola, Valhallavägen, 371 41, Sweden, Karlskrona, 13:00 (English)
Supervisors
Examiners
Available from: 2015-10-22 Created: 2015-10-16 Last updated: 2015-10-22Bibliographically approved

Open Access in DiVA

fulltext(1372 kB)1912 downloads
File information
File name FULLTEXT02.pdfFile size 1372 kBChecksum SHA-512
f8c7cd58a1373ed056aa0ff836af7af1f8e88e41f179d0dee69bebdd6c5147a24143810becae301a95ef7bbac8157555d6f5f262e3f19986bf339b11e048a36b
Type fulltextMimetype application/pdf

Search in DiVA

By author/editor
Josyula, Sai Prashanth
By organisation
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
Computer Systems

Search outside of DiVA

GoogleGoogle Scholar
Total: 1912 downloads
The number of downloads is the sum of all downloads of full texts. It may include eg previous versions that are now no longer available

urn-nbn

Altmetric score

urn-nbn
Total: 2369 hits
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf