Cryptography Through the Lens of Group Theory

Cryptography has been around for many years, and mathematics has been around even longer. When the two subjects were combined, however, both the improvements and attacks on cryptography were prevalent. This paper introduces and performs a comparative analysis of two versions of the ElGamal cryptosystem, both of which use the specific field of mathematics known as group theory

Efficient signature system using optimized elliptic curve cryptosystem over GF(2(n)).

Elliptic curve cryptography was proposed independently by Neil Koblitz and Victor Miller in the middle of 80\u27s. The security of Elliptic Curve Cryptography depends upon the elliptic curve discrete logarithm problem. For providing the same strength, it uses a smaller key size than that for RSA. This advantage makes it particularly suitable for some devices and applications, which have a resource constraint. Digital Signature Systems are one of the most important applications of cryptography. In Y2K IEEE has included two Elliptic Cryptography based methods in its new standard P1363. The elliptic curve cryptosystem uses point operations like point doubling and addition. As a consequence, optimization of, point operations plays a key role in determining the efficiency of computation. Today\u27s technology easily permits the fabrication of multiple simple processors on a single chip. For such devices, a serial-parallel computation has been proposed by Adnan and Mohammad [AM03][AM03a] for a faster computation of elliptic algorithms. This thesis presents a new optimized point operations algorithm for elliptic curve cryptosystems over GF(2 n). We have designed and implemented the new algorithm for a more efficient digital signature system. Paper copy at Leddy Library: Theses & Major Papers - Basement, West Bldg. / Call Number: Thesis2004 .W37. Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 43-01, page: 0247. Adviser: Akshai Aggarwal. Thesis (M.Sc.)--University of Windsor (Canada), 2004

Computation in Optimal Extension Fields

This thesis focuses on a class of Galois field used to achieve fast finite field arithmetic which we call Optimal Extension Fields (OEFs), first introduced in cite{baileypaar98}. We extend this work by presenting an adaptation of Itoh and Tsujii\u27s algorithm for finite field inversion applied to OEFs. In particular, we use the facts that the action of the Frobenius map in $GF(p^m)$ can be computed with only $m-1$ subfield multiplications and that inverses in $GF(p)$ may be computed cheaply using known techniques. As a result, we show that one extension field inversion can be computed with a logarithmic number of extension field multiplications. In addition, we provide new variants of the Karatsuba-Ofman algorithm for extension field multiplication which give a performance increase. Further, we provide an OEF construction algorithm together with tables of Type I and Type II OEFs along with statistics on the number of pseudo-Mersenne primes and OEFs. We apply this new work to provide implementation results for elliptic curve cryptosystems on both DEC Alpha workstations and Pentium-class PCs. These results show that OEFs when used with our new inversion and multiplication algorithms provide a substantial performance increase over other reported methods

Efficient implementation of elliptic curve cryptography.

Elliptic Curve Cryptosystems (ECC) were introduced in 1985 by Neal Koblitz and Victor Miller. Small key size made elliptic curve attractive for public key cryptosystem implementation. This thesis introduces solutions of efficient implementation of ECC in algorithmic level and in computation level. In algorithmic level, a fast parallel elliptic curve scalar multiplication algorithm based on a dual-processor hardware system is developed. The method has an average computation time of n3 Elliptic Curve Point Addition on an n-bit scalar. The improvement is n Elliptic Curve Point Doubling compared to conventional methods. When a proper coordinate system and binary representation for the scalar k is used the average execution time will be as low as n Elliptic Curve Point Doubling, which makes this method about two times faster than conventional single processor multipliers using the same coordinate system. In computation level, a high performance elliptic curve processor (ECP) architecture is presented. The processor uses parallelism in finite field calculation to achieve high speed execution of scalar multiplication algorithm. The architecture relies on compile-time detection rather than of run-time detection of parallelism which results in less hardware. Implemented on FPGA, the proposed processor operates at 66MHz in GF(2 167) and performs scalar multiplication in 100muSec, which is considerably faster than recent implementations.Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Paper copy at Leddy Library: Theses & Major Papers - Basement, West Bldg. / Call Number: Thesis2004 .A57. Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 44-03, page: 1446. Thesis (M.A.Sc.)--University of Windsor (Canada), 2005

Cryptographic Pairings: Efficiency and DLP security

This thesis studies two important aspects of the use of pairings in cryptography, efficient algorithms and security. Pairings are very useful tools in cryptography, originally used for the cryptanalysis of elliptic curve cryptography, they are now used in key exchange protocols, signature schemes and Identity-based cryptography. This thesis comprises of two parts: Security and Efficient Algorithms. In Part I: Security, the security of pairing-based protocols is considered, with a thorough examination of the Discrete Logarithm Problem (DLP) as it occurs in PBC. Results on the relationship between the two instances of the DLP will be presented along with a discussion about the appropriate selection of parameters to ensure particular security level. In Part II: Efficient Algorithms, some of the computational issues which arise when using pairings in cryptography are addressed. Pairings can be computationally expensive, so the Pairing-Based Cryptography (PBC) research community is constantly striving to find computational improvements for all aspects of protocols using pairings. The improvements given in this section contribute towards more efficient methods for the computation of pairings, and increase the efficiency of operations necessary in some pairing-based protocol

Failure of the Point Blinding Countermeasure Against Fault Attack in Pairing-Based Cryptography

Article published in the proceedings of the C2SI conference, May 2015.Pairings are mathematical tools that have been proven to be very useful in the construction of many cryptographic protocols. Some of these protocols are suitable for implementation on power constrained devices such as smart cards or smartphone which are subject to side channel attacks. In this paper, we analyse the efficiency of the point blinding countermeasure in pairing based cryptography against side channel attacks. In particular,we show that this countermeasure does not protect Miller's algorithm for pairing computation against fault attack. We then give recommendation for a secure implementation of a pairing based protocol using the Miller algorithm

Developing an Automatic Generation Tool for Cryptographic Pairing Functions

Pairing-Based Cryptography is receiving steadily more attention from industry, mainly because of the increasing interest in Identity-Based protocols. Although there are plenty of applications, efficiently implementing the pairing functions is often difficult as it requires more knowledge than previous cryptographic primitives. The author presents a tool for automatically generating optimized code for the pairing functions which can be used in the construction of such cryptographic protocols. In the following pages I present my work done on the construction of pairing function code, its optimizations and how their construction can be automated to ease the work of the protocol implementer. Based on the user requirements and the security level, the created cryptographic compiler chooses and constructs the appropriate elliptic curve. It identifies the supported pairing function: the Tate, ate, R-ate or pairing lattice/optimal pairing, and its optimized parameters. Using artificial intelligence algorithms, it generates optimized code for the final exponentiation and for hashing a point to the required group using the parametrisation of the chosen family of curves. Support for several multi-precision libraries has been incorporated: Magma, MIRACL and RELIC are already included, but more are possible