Efficient Algorithms for Elliptic Curve Cryptosystems

Elliptic curves are the basis for a relative new class of public-key schemes. It is predicted that elliptic curves will replace many existing schemes in the near future. It is thus of great interest to develop algorithms which allow efficient implementations of elliptic curve crypto systems. This thesis deals with such algorithms. Efficient algorithms for elliptic curves can be classified into low-level algorithms, which deal with arithmetic in the underlying finite field and high-level algorithms, which operate with the group operation. This thesis describes three new algorithms for efficient implementations of elliptic curve cryptosystems. The first algorithm describes the application of the Karatsuba-Ofman Algorithm to multiplication in composite fields GF((2n)m). The second algorithm deals with efficient inversion in composite Galois fields of the form GF((2n)m). The third algorithm is an entirely new approach which accelerates the multiplication of points which is the core operation in elliptic curve public-key systems. The algorithm explores computational advantages by computing repeated point doublings directly through closed formulae rather than from individual point doublings. Finally we apply all three algorithms to an implementation of an elliptic curve system over GF((216)11). We provide ablolute performance measures for the field operations and for an entire point multiplication. We also show the improvements gained by the new point multiplication algorithm in conjunction with the k-ary and improved k-ary methods for exponentiation

Generalised Mersenne Numbers Revisited

Generalised Mersenne Numbers (GMNs) were defined by Solinas in 1999 and feature in the NIST (FIPS 186-2) and SECG standards for use in elliptic curve cryptography. Their form is such that modular reduction is extremely efficient, thus making them an attractive choice for modular multiplication implementation. However, the issue of residue multiplication efficiency seems to have been overlooked. Asymptotically, using a cyclic rather than a linear convolution, residue multiplication modulo a Mersenne number is twice as fast as integer multiplication; this property does not hold for prime GMNs, unless they are of Mersenne's form. In this work we exploit an alternative generalisation of Mersenne numbers for which an analogue of the above property --- and hence the same efficiency ratio --- holds, even at bitlengths for which schoolbook multiplication is optimal, while also maintaining very efficient reduction. Moreover, our proposed primes are abundant at any bitlength, whereas GMNs are extremely rare. Our multiplication and reduction algorithms can also be easily parallelised, making our arithmetic particularly suitable for hardware implementation. Furthermore, the field representation we propose also naturally protects against side-channel attacks, including timing attacks, simple power analysis and differential power analysis, which is essential in many cryptographic scenarios, in constrast to GMNs.Comment: 32 pages. Accepted to Mathematics of Computatio

Group law computations on Jacobians of hyperelliptic curves

We derive an explicit method of computing the composition step in Cantor’s algorithm for group operations on Jacobians of hyperelliptic curves. Our technique is inspired by the geometric description of the group law and applies to hyperelliptic curves of arbitrary genus. While Cantor’s general composition involves arithmetic in the polynomial ring F_q[x], the algorithm we propose solves a linear system over the base field which can be written down directly from the Mumford coordinates of the group elements. We apply this method to give more efficient formulas for group operations in both affine and projective coordinates for cryptographic systems based on Jacobians of genus 2 hyperelliptic curves in general form