Solving the Discrete Logarithm of a 113-Bit Koblitz Curve with an FPGA Cluster

Using FPGAs to compute the discrete logarithms of elliptic curves is a well-known method. However, until to date only CPU clusters succeeded in computing new elliptic curve discrete logarithm records. This work presents a high-speed FPGA implementation that was used to compute the discrete logarithm of a 113-bit Koblitz curve. The core of the design is a fully unrolled, highly pipelined, self-sufficient Pollard’s rho iteration function. An 18-core Virtex-6 FPGA cluster computed the discrete logarithm of a 113-bit Koblitz curve in extrapolated 24 days. Until to date, no attack on such a large Koblitz curve succeeded using as little resources or in such a short time frame.