Secure Elliptic Curve Implementations: An Analysis of Resistance to Power-Attacks in a DSP Processor

With the popularity of wireless communication devices a growing new important dimension of embedded systems design is that of security. This paper presents exploration of power attack resistance, using a statistical approach for identifying regions of the power trace which pose a possible security threat. Unlike previous power analysis research, a new metric supporting small timing shifts and complex processor architectures is presented. This research helps to identify how to create secure implementations of software. Elliptic curve point multiplications using the Weierstrass curve and Jacobi form over 192-bit prime fields were implemented and analyzed. Over 60 real measured power traces of elliptic curve point multiplications running at 100MHz on a DSP VLIW processor core were analyzed. Modification of power traces through software design was performed to maximize resistance to power attacks in addition to improving energy dissipation and performance by 44% with a 31% increase in code size. This research is important for industry since efficient yet secure cryptography is crucial for wireless communication embedded system devices and future IP enabled smart cards.