A Random M-ary Method Based Countermeasure against Side Channel Attacks

The randomization of scalar multiplication in ECC is one of the fundamental concepts in defense methods against side channel attacks. This paper proposes a countermeasure against simple and differential power analyses attacks through randomizing the transformed m-ary method based on a random m-ary recoding algorithm. Therefore, the power consumption is independent of the secret key. We show that the proposed algorithm has fewer computational cost than the previous countermeasures against power attacks in ECC. Accordingly, since the variable window width arrays and random computational tracks can resist against the SPA and DPA, the proposed countermeasure can provide a higher security for smartcards.

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